To keep or throw away things ..... that tell a story

It’s one of those fault lines running through our house.  

I have a tendency to collect which if truth be known is just hoarding and there are others who relentlessly declutter.  It is that age old dilemma of which pieces of paper to keep to throw away?  Now I know it is easier now with paperless bills and emails but it remains a problem for me.

Not only do I have the entire collection of Beano’s from 1985 to 97, assorted runs of Look and Learn but during the 90s I went back and began buying whole volumes of the Eagle comic, which I first read in 1957.
More importantly there are the family documents, nothing I grant you as grand as a signed letter from minor royalty or the plans drawn up by Capability Brown for a new garden estate.  Ours are more down to earth.

They include wartime letters faded photographs and quite a few negatives which I reckon haven’t seen daylight for over 80 years and lots more.  Earlier I wrote about the family identity cards and today I want to share a medical certificate which I guess my father had to possess so that he could carry on working.

It is the International Certificate of Vaccination or Revaccination against small pox issued by the Ministry of Health.  Now I haven’t found out yet which European countries required it but as dad worked across Western Europe it could have been any one of many.  Or it may just have been that because of the outbreak of smallpox here in Britain in 1962 our neighbours naturally enough wanted to be sure he was free of the disease.

And smallpox was still a killer.  Today through the efforts of the World Health Organisation it has been eliminated, but in the early 20th century stretching back into time it was both feared and dreaded.  At best it could leave an infected person terribly disfigured and of course often proved fatal.

Now I remember the 1962 outbreak only because were vaccinated as were thousands of children across the country. Now like all these things there is a blog devoted to the outbreak http://smallpox1962.wordpress.com so I’ll let you go there to get the full story.

But had Dad not kept the certificate and had I in turn not stored it away there would be no record of the impact on the disease on my family.

Not perhaps great page turning history, but history.

Pictures; Certificate of vaccination, 1962, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Reflecting on the National Health Service .......... in the age of Covid

 Yesterday I was vaccinated.

It was the upshot  of my health and my age.

At which point the story could also reflect on those “anti vacs” who sit out there peddling all sorts of bizarre, misleading, and dangerous assertions.

But I won’t other than to say a recent Radio 4 documentary, offered up a historical perspective and set the correct correct.*

So, instead I shall reflect on my visit to the Jain Community Centre in Levenshulme.

The call from the GP had come at the beginning of the week and after being offered several appointments from the following day onwards I opted for Saturday.

I arrived early, waited my turn, and went through the procedure in less than half an hour, from walking through the door, being checked in, vaccinated, and resting for the obligatory 15 minutes.

Everyone from the volunteers through to the medical teams were helpful, reassuring and above all mindful that some at least of those receiving the jab might be a bit nervous.  There was plenty of humour mixed with the caring professionalism which marks the NHS out.

James Gillray, 1802

So that is it……. for once no great historical piece of research or interesting sets of maps and pictures, just a comment on  how the National Health Service continues to do what it was set up to do …. caring for all of us at the point of need in a way that would not surprise Nye Bevan or all those who advocated and ushered the NHS over 80 years ago.

And of course also a thank you.

Leaving me just to add those cartoons, from the anti vac James Gilray and Cruikshank’s balanced and more accurate comment on vaccination.

 George Cruikshank, 1808

Picture; The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!—vide. the Publications of ye Anti-Vaccine Society, James Gillray, published June 12, 1802 by H. Humphrey, St. James's Street, and Jenner and his two colleagues seeing off three anti-vaccination opponents, the dead are littered at their feet. Coloured etching by George Cruikshank, 1808, Welcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works?query=x7kbxaef&search=images

*The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement, The Long View, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pffk

The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement ........ with its modern parallels

Now the anti-vaccine lobby is stalking social media, emboldened by urban myths, with more than a little conspiratorial theories and perhaps a degree of ignorance.

Not that I would want to suggest that their motives or their actions are entirely fueled by that.

So it is timely that yesterday Radio 4 broadcast The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement, which like all the ones in the series was informative and a joy to listen to.

Leaving me just to add the sleeve notes from the broadcast.

"In 1798 Gloucestershire doctor Edward Jenner successfully proved that a dose of relatively mild cowpox infection gave protection from smallpox, one of the greatest killers in history. Within five years, Jenner's discovery was being used across Europe and a decade later it had gone global.

But opposition to the vaccine in Britain was fierce. 

By the late 19th Century, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccinations.

In this episode of The Long View, Jonathan Freedland draws parallels between the smallpox anti-vaccination movement and todays' Covid-19 anti-vaxxers.

Producer: Sarah Shebbeare"

Picture; The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!—vide. the Publications of ye Anti-Vaccine Society, James Gillray, published June 12, 1802 by H. Humphrey, St. James's Street, and Jenner and his two colleagues seeing off three anti-vaccination opponents, the dead are littered at their feet. Coloured etching by I. Cruikshank, 1808, Welcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works?query=x7kbxaef&search=images

*The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement, The Long View, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pffk