Some of you remember my mother, Grace Fulks Myers. She contracted diphtheria, known as “the Strangler,” in about 1916 or 1917 at age 5 or 6 years.
In 1890, Koch proteges Behring and Kitasato were able to demonstrate that they could prevent tetanus.
However, in 1890 in Germany was the first attempt to cure a disease with an antitoxin.
In 1894, Emile Roux of the Pasteur Institute summarized the experiments of the diphtheria antitoxin at the International Congress on Hygiene in Budapest with each delegate returning home with a bottle of the curative agent, Diphtheria Antitoxin. This marked an epoch moment in the history of medicine.
Also in 1894, American chemists William Park and Anna Williams discovered a way to make a toxin 500 times more potent which increased the efficiency of the antitoxin simulation. This resulted in antitoxin available around the world.
Truly a miracle.
Fast forward to 1916 and my mother was about 5 years old and quite ill with diphtheria. She recalled the acute fatigue and the airway obstruction as her half-sister held her.
Grace had been the first of three to survive infancy of my grandfather’s second marriage, following the death of the mother of his nine children. Grace was given the diphtheria antitoxin as a “last ditch effort,” and she recalled difficulty breathing, then coughing up a glob of phlegm that subsequently opened her airway.
She was fatigued for a longer period during her recovery, but was bribed to try walking with a new pair of high-button shoes, black patent on the bottom and red on the uppers. They would not let her try them on until she demonstrated an attempt to walk, which she resisted. She later was the first of her family to receive a college diploma, majoring in piano and organ at Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater.
Grace Fulks Myers survived diphtheria, World War I, The Influenza Epidemic, The Great Depression, WWII, the Korean War, McCarthyism, Watergate, etc., and died at age 100½ in 2012 of pneumonia.
Her physician stated, “There is not a lot of documentation on the treatment of 100-year-old diphtheria survivors!”
My father also survived gangrene, but that is another story.
The world may not have been affected either way, but due to vaccines, my siblings and I are still here. This is only one reason why I believe in immunizations.
Jeanne Myers, RN,
Iola, Kan.
