Word: diphtheria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rejected her past-because it was filled with tragedy. Her mother died of diphtheria when she was eight. She had a deep love for her father Elliott, a jolly man, a big-game hunter and a younger brother of Teddy Roosevelt. He called her "Little Nell." But he died, with alcoholism as a contributing cause, when she was nine. Eleanor went to live with her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Valentine Hall, a stern disciplinarian. She was horribly unhappy until she went off to a French finishing school in England. There she came to recognize her own mental powers. "More and more...
...five, Tom caught diphtheria. "He practically died...
...fever finally passed, and I thought he had recovered. One day I noticed he was crawling along the floor after his toys, I said, 'Why, Tom, whatever is the matter with your legs?' and called the doctor. His legs were paralyzed. Apparently, during Tom's diphtheria, he swallowed his tonsils.* They poisoned his system. It was two years before he could walk normally...
Since then, "guided and directed mutation with precisely predictable features" has produced bacteria that mutate after infection with viruses. Formerly harmless strains of diphtheria bacilli will, after viral infection, secrete the poison of virulent diphtheria. Because the bacterial lines breed true, said Dr. Horsfall, both these are cases of "infective heredity" induced by environmental factors...
...medicine's attention were the bacteria, hulking big microbes (by comparison with viruses) that generally attack by producing systemic poisons rather than by invading the body's cells. Antibiotics have wiped out or brought under control virtually all the major bacterial diseases: tuberculosis, some forms of pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, gonorrhea, syphilis and most of the other illnesses that stir memories of Paul de Kruif's heroic Microbe Hunters...