Braidwood Health Care: 1940s

“Mathematics is like childhood diseases. The younger you get it, the better.”

Arnold Sommerfeld

Childhood Diseases and Accidents

Childhood Afflictions

Scarlet fever, diphtheria, rheumatic fever, influenza, smallpox, mumps, chicken pox, polio, TB, and whooping cough. The one disease that Mom feared the most was “polio.”

It seemed as if all the kids in Braidwood sooner or later came down with chickenpox, measles, or mumps. I know that we did. These “childhood diseases” spread from one to another rapidly but seldom resulted in any long-term health issues.

Somehow, Mom knew that polio could be spread via water, so swimming at the BRC was off-limits during the month of August.  The thought of spending months encapsulated in an “iron lung” was dire enough that we followed mom’s directive without too much resistance. That, despite the dog days of August and the gloomy prospect of school within a few weeks.

Once contracted, there was little that we could do about measles but endure the 5-8 days of illness. A visit to the doctor might be in order, although little could be done except to verify that, indeed, we had it. Most of the time, we didn’t even need to go to a doctor.

Braidwood until 1950 had literally one doctor and no dentists.  Dr. Frick was in town, but my doctor, the one who delivered me, was Dr. Wilson in Wilmington.  The dentist was located in Coal City.  (Braidwood – along with Braceville, Godley, and Essex – appeared to me to be the least resourced towns compared to Wilmington and Coal City which had water and sewage systems, movie theaters, and a dance hall.)  

My first trips to the dentist were to Coal City when I was about 11 or 12.  After the age of 3-4, I cannot remember seeing a physician regularly, only for physical exams for high school.  A few times I had to have stitches as a result of ice-skating accidents and maybe a home visit during the chicken pox. When my sister, Carole Ann, was stricken with scarlet fever for two weeks, a doctor came to our house while I lived across the street at Mrs. Jeffrey’s house. 

This is not to say that I had no nee d for medical assistance.  We just didn’t go.  As a result, my teeth are not in good shape.  One time as a freshman in high school during P.E., we were doing “wheel barrows” and my back went out.  I could hardly walk for a week.  No doctor. I also suffered head aches so severe I would get physically sick.  No doctor.  In high school, I got some pretty bad sore throats, but I cannot remember going to a doctor or using much medication.  

Had we known more about sun burns/tans, I would have spent far less time at the Braidwood Recreation Club without protection on my pale body. The damage that was incurred at an early age gets its revenge later in life in the form of dermatologist visits.

I can’t say that our family operated any differently than the other families in Braidwood.  There was no health insurance and parents could not afford medical care outside our own homes. As a result, mom and Mrs. Jeffrey were the care givers and I survived, probably building up immunity to ward off future illnesses.

Accidents on Roundhouse Street

Although not as dramatic and traumatic as being run over by a car, there were two other incidents that occurred when we were living upstairs in Kilpatrick’s rental apartment on Roundhouse Street.  One involved a toadstool and the other a sewing machine. I was between the ages of 1-2.

While left alone in the yard, I grazed on some mushrooms that were later determined to be poisonous toadstools. Mom discover this only when I became violently sick and threw up toadstool pieces.

The other incident revolved around Mom’s peddle sewing machine. Again, being quite young, I wasn’t aware that my finger placed under the needle could be penetrated by that needle when my other hand rotated the wheel. After the needle came to a halt and rested, it pierced through my finger. I wasn’t smart enough to rotate the wheel back today its original position. Screaming at the top of my lungs and unable to remove my captive finger, I got mom’s attention quickly and she reversed the needle’s direction and freed my bloody finger.