10/14/2012:
Unlike our more sedentary younger population today, North Dakota children of the 1930s got plenty of exercise helping with the farm work – and most activities were carried on outdoors. But in the era before modern medicine, namely penicillin and other wonder drugs, there were many health dangers lurking.
On this date in 1938, the Haliday Promoter reminded parents that whooping cough was a highly contagious and dangerous disease and they should do all they could to protect their children. In the first six months of 1938, thirty children in North Dakota had died from it and the toll was rising.
Through poor health habits and lack of vigilance, we may be doomed to repeat the past.
Dakota Datebook written by Jim Davis
Source:
The Halliday Promoter October 14, 1938