God Moment - Ian Pritchard - April 7, 2020
Today, my health care is provided by a variety of medical specialties—from neurology to urology, supported by skilled technicians using advanced diagnostic tools. When I was growing up on a farm near Alcove in the 1930s and ’40s, my health care was provided mostly by the one doctor in general practice then, H. J. G. Geggie, MD...
My earliest memory of Dr. Geggie was an unannounced visit to our one-room schoolhouse at Alcove when I was probably eight or nine. He came with a little black bag from which he produced a glass syringe with needle, large by today’s standards, plus two bottles. From the first bottle he loaded the syringe. The other was used to sterilize the surface of the needle after each student’s vaccination. All of us had been previously vaccinated for protection against smallpox, but on this particular day we were being protected against diphtheria. As my older brother was having his turn the needle broke, so the doctor had to return the next day with another needle to finish his task.
Many families did not look far back to remember tragedies caused by diphtheria. My own aunt Anna died of it as a child. Any doctor alone in a rural area kept an eye on the community for infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis, but the deadly diphtheria was probably foremost in their mind. The sting of the needle was soon forgotten, and the memory of that vaccination did not resurface until after my 16th birthday, when there was another unannounced visit by the same doctor.
This time it was to the Wakefield high school, where Dr. Geggie simply took throat swabs from those students with sore throats and sent them off to a laboratory. My results came back positive for the organism causing diphtheria. Somehow I had become a carrier posing danger to others and was quickly sent off to quarantine. That vaccination years before likely had just saved my life. I felt fine, but that month of quarantine mucked up my senior school year. The time was spent sharing a cross-cut saw with my brother, cutting logs in the swamp. It was a great experience in learning to get along with each other.
(Click here to read more about Ian and Dr. Geggie.)
The Pritchard family in the spring of 1935