The time for this year’s flu shots arrived so off we went to a pharmacy to receive our vaccinations. The first thing the pharmacist asked was “How old are you?” It’s hard for me to say 76, because I am in denial, but I answered honestly. She said she was out of the high-dose vaccine recommended for people in my age group. The next day the shipment arrived so we returned. I asked just what was the difference between the two vaccines. The clerk said it was recommended for the elderly. Elderly? I jumped on that word to play some high jinks deviltry. We ended up involving three of the pharmacists and clerks as they tried to correct the “elderly” verbiage to my liking by using such words as older, mature, grandfatherly, aged like a fine wine and others that were a bit more acceptable. It all ended up for the good.
The ladies never did satisfy my curiosity in telling the difference between the two vaccines, so when I got home, a google search for information brought a simple non-scientific answer. The high-dose version contains four times the antigen of the regular dose and is intended to give older people a better immune response, and therefore, better protection against the flu. I accepted that.
What is the history of vaccinations? I wondered. A man named Edward Jenner living in England administered the world’s first vaccination in 1796. Jenner was a perceptive man who realized that when the area milkmaids developed a mild illness called cowpox, they never went on to contract smallpox. He conducted an experiment by scratching the arm of an 8-year-old boy and smeared some pus from cowpox on it. Then after a period of time he took the next step and added a bit of smallpox into the same child. The boy did not catch it since he was now immunized.
A story from our own area’s history talks about the winter of 1884 when smallpox broke out at Owego. One family named Knutson suffered the first tragic deaths from the outbreak when two of their four children died. As a result a doctor came from Fargo to administer vaccinations to everyone in the community. The thought of a long needle inserted into the arm did not appeal to everyone. The wife of one settler refused it and hid herself thinking the doctor would soon leave. But her husband became adamant and said, “Katherina, you must come down, the doctor is here and he says you must get ‘waxmenated.’” After much coaxing she finally relented to being “waxmenated.”
In the St. John the Baptist Cemetery near Zeeland, North Dakota, six iron crosses mark the graves of one family’s children who died during the diphtheria epidemic of 1898-1899. This community was particularly hard hit when 61 different families suffered the deaths of 99 individuals, mostly children. We will venture to guess that they were not vaccinated.
An engrossing interview found on YouTube features a man named Charles Challey of Lisbon, ND relating his memories of the flu epidemic of 1918. He talked about the severity of the illness and how fast it killed some of the victims. Challey’s father was the mortician in the community, and Charles tells of wagons and buggies carrying bodies of the victims that were stacked up behind the mortuary.
A story from the annals of my wife’s family deals with a diphtheria epidemic in 1927. One family who didn’t believe in doctors or vaccinations experienced the death of three sons in one week’s time. My mother-in-law recalled how they dreaded the sight of the father of the dead children walking over the hill towards their farm to order another coffin be built by her dad. For building material he used boards he ripped from partitions in the granary because the roads were blocked in the winter and he could not get to a lumberyard for new boards. He expressed concern that he might run out of boards. Neighbors became insistent for action and banded together to bring by horse team a Doctor Lorenzen to the rural community to vaccinate all the families.
We need to thank Edward Jenner for identifying how we can prevent diseases through vaccinations. Some still won’t accept vaccinations for their children. The state allows for three types of exemptions: medical, religious, and personal belief. A health care provider’s signature is needed for a medical exemption. A parent’s signature is required for religious or personal belief exemptions. That’s their choice. My shots are up-to-date.
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