Breakin’ it down for the little ones.
“We must all be vaccinated,” Jean told Bill one morning.
“What is being vaccinated?” asked Bill.
“Vaccination prevents certain kinds of sickness. If you are vaccinated against smallpox, you will not catch that disease as Betty did,” said Jean.
“What is smallpox?” asked Dorothy.
“Smallpox is a disease caused by germs, just as colds are caused by germs,” Miss Stone, their teacher, told them. “Once it was very common indeed for people to have smallpox; many of them died. Those who got better had ugly marks on their hands and faces. Then vaccination was discovered. Now few people have smallpox.
“If children stopped being vaccinated, smallpox might become as common as it was years ago.”
“Who wants to go down to the doctor to be vaccinated this morning?”
Bill and Jean raised their hands.
“All right, Bill and Jean, you may go.”
“We have come to be vaccinated,” they said to the doctor.
“Good morning, Bill and Jean,” said the doctor. He had a jolly smile.
“I’m glad to meet children who come down willingly to be vaccinated.”
“How does it feel to be vaccinated?” asked Bill.
“Did you ever prick your finger?” the doctor asked. “Well, being vaccinated feels a little like pricking your finger. In about seven to twelve days, your arm may swell a little and feel sore. You may even have a fever; but afterwards you are almost certain not to get the disease which vaccination prevents.
“Do you still want to be vaccinated?”
“Yes,” said Bill at once.
Bill held out his bare arm. The doctor cleaned a spot on the arm, put a drop of liquid on the cleaned place, and pricked the skin under the drop. Then Jean was vaccinated, and they went back to their room.
“Tell us about it,” said the children.
“It doesn’t hurt much,” said Jean. “It feels like a little scratch. Vaccination takes only an instant. If you are vaccinated properly, you are almost certain not to get smallpox.”
Then, two by two, the whole class were vaccinated.
“This is the most grown-up class I’ve ever met,” said the doctor.
Excerpted from “Good Habits,” Health and Growth Series, by Charters, Smiley and Strang, The Macmillan Company, 1935.
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