Thursday, December 24, 2009

A Childhood Christmas Memory

The year I was 12, I picked up a touch of pneumonia. I was treated with the then-still -new sulfa drugs, and so it was no big deal. But I did have to stay in bed for about 10 days which made me cranky beyond belief. My mother was not impressed: her own father had died of the same disease in the pre-sulfa era, when she was 8, and she thought I ought damn well to count myself lucky.

But they did let me have some records to console me. Here was my favorite:


Why they didn't just crush a pillow over my head, I cannot imagine.
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Followup: Wiki has an enlightening short history of sulfa drugs. Here's a remarkable account--nearly contemporaneous with my own experience--on the use of sulfa drugs on the farm. And here is a biography of the culprit.

Update: Google just informed me that this page is in Slovenian.

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