sonora2sonoma

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

By
Tim Konrad

Not all the recollections of my 1950s childhood were warm and fuzzy. There were also other, less welcoming memories recalling a time fraught with peril, fear and disease. Antibiotics hadn’t been around that long back then, and people were more keenly aware of the risks posed by transmissible diseases. Before the development of antibiotics, something as simple as a paper cut often resulted in a deadly infection.

Abraham Lincoln’s favorite son died of typhus in the midst of the Civil War, and an infected blister led to the severe blood poisoning that took the life of President Coolidge’s favorite son, Calvin Jr., in 1924. Smallpox, the disease that took Benjamin Franklin’s son in 1736, wouldn’t be completely eradicated until 1979.

Prior to 1936, people routinely perished from complications originating from simple infections. That year, a drug named prontylin was used to save President Roosevelt’s son FDR Jr., who had been facing death from a bout with streptococcus.

Penicillin, considered the first true antibiotic, was accidentally discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it wasn’t mass-produced until 1943 to meet the growing demands of the Allied forces during the Second World War.

          Curiously, Fleming’s colleagues had shown little interest when he’d presented his discovery to them. When initial attempts to refine the fungus proved unsuccessful, Fleming came to the conclusion that production of the compound for therapeutic purposes was nearly impossible.

          The project was revived in 1937 by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who attempted to devise a workable way to purify the penicillin from its natural state. By 1940, their team had produced enough penicillin to begin testing it in animals. Eight mice were infected with streptococci bacteria, but only four of them were given penicillin to counteract it. The half that received the antibiotic survived while the other four mice perished.

          It took time and great effort to overcome the obstacles to efficient production of the substance. Those obstacles were brought into sharp relief in 1941, when the first human trial began with a 43-year-old policeman who had developed a life-threatening infection from a cut. His initial response to treatment had been promising but, when the small supply of available penicillin had run out, his infection rallied and he succumbed.  

          What followed was a novel approach to increasing the supply of penicillin. Noting that around 80% of an administered dose of the substance was being excreted when a patient urinated,  a campaign was launched to harvest patients’ pee. Even with that measure, however, it was apparent a new mass production process was needed, but British industry was too engaged in the war effort to meet the challenge.

          In 1941, Howard Florey decided to look elsewhere. He assembled a team in Peoria, Illinois at a Department of Agriculture research laboratory. The Peoria team discovered that a by-product of readily-available corn starch, when added to the mold broth, resulted in an exponential  increase in penicillin production.

The team also looked into different mold strains, eventually discovering a strain on a rotting cantaloupe located at a nearby market that made six times more mold than the strain Fleming had been working with when he’d made his initial discovery. This paved the way for large-scale penicillin production during WW II.

Presaging the company’s later role in Covid vaccination research, Pfizer was one of the principal manufacturers of penicillin for the war effort.

Penicillin played a pivotal role in my young life when, as a baby, I came down with a mysterious illness. No one, not even, Dr. McGillis, the physician who’d attended me, could ever shed light on exactly what I’d fallen ill from, save to say that, had the drug not been administered to me  I might well have died from it.

The knowledge that, were it not for penicillin, I quite likely would not be here to write these words, has continually guided my choices concerning vaccinations, and has made me a staunch believer in germ theory and the scientific method as well as a supporter of science in general.

When Dr. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine came into use in 1955, forty-seven years after it had been first identified in 1908, it wasn’t long before the first doses were administered at Sonora Elementary School. Polio cases had surged nation-wide in 1952, and the local community embraced the chance to protect its children from infection. My cousin George had come down with a mild case of it, as had several other kids in the community.

President Roosevelt had fallen ill to polio in 1921, and there were frightening tales of people confined to living out their lives trapped in “iron lung” machines because the muscles they needed in order to breathe had become paralyzed by the pathogen. Since it was a virus, there was no cure, which meant the only safe means of protection was through vaccination.

To my 8 or 9-year-old sensibilities, the only thing pathological about the affair was my fear of needles. Sugar-cubes loaded with the vaccine would be administered a few years later in a subsequent round of vaccinations, but the first few rounds of the drug were administered via injection.

The needles were short, similar to the ones diabetics use to administer insulin shots, but the mere fact needles and pain were involved was all that was needed to send me into an emotional tail-spin that would leave me consumed with dread apprehension for days leading up to each round of shots. And there were several rounds! Despite my fears, however, there was comfort to be found in the knowledge that I was protected from the virus.

I take that same comfort today knowing that my chances of surviving the current Covid pandemic are greatly improved because I got vaccinated. I find it hard to understand what motivates the people who refuse to take this simple step toward helping their fellow citizens achieve herd immunity.

Beyond all the arguments and reasons presented by those who oppose vaccines and vaccine mandates lurks a bigger issue, one with the potential to transform society, and not in a good way!  

The people advancing these ideas all appear to have failed to realize that their behavior isn’t taking place in a vacuum, that their actions affect other people, and that their choices place their neighbors, not to mention themselves, at risk.

This development points to a worrisome trend with potentially ominous ramifications for the future of our society:  The sense of social responsibility that guides the actions of those whose considerations extend beyond their own personal needs and interests appears to be missing in these people. Where this may ultimately lead is anyone’s guess at this moment, but it plainly points to trouble ahead.

To be continued: