When I was a boy in the village was a clinic where we were taken to be weighed and checked over, there was no doctor at the clinic just the district nurses. Mum took the twins and me down there every week and she got her milk tokens to buy extra milk as she was breast feeding the twins. The twins were weighed and a record was kept of how they gained weight each time. Colin had been crying a lot and mum asked if she could do any thing to stop him. The nurse asked if it was just Colin or both of them. Mum said it was just Colin, David was sleeping right through. The nurse examined my youngest brother and said that mum should take him to the Doctor as she though he might have a little hernia in his groin. There was no such thing as appointments then, mum went up to the surgery and sat in the waiting room until the doctor asked her to come in to the surgery. Dr Colin Owen was the son of the old Dr Owen who had looked after me as a baby.
Old Dr Owen had asked mum once when she asked to stop her milk for feeding me " How old is the baby?" she said "this is him" , me almost two sat on her knee. His comment was " Bloody hell woman you ought to be in the barn with the cows". he believed in calling a spade a shovel.
Young Dr Owen examined Colin and said he had an infantile hernia and would need an operation. Colin was taken to hospital and had his operation within a week. He was soon back to normal and was crawling soon after.
When it came to other illnesses we caught diseases like measles, mumps and german measles, the mothers let the other mothers know and they had a kids party so that the all the kids got them at once. The only time I can remember mum being afraid of a disease was when someone was told they had polio. We were rushed down to the clinic to get a sugar lump with the vaccine for polio on it. There were stories of kids who got polio and spent a long time in a big iron lung to help them get over it. Even then they had to wear calipers or use crutches for the rest of their lives.
I got chicken pox one day it was so itchy with all the little pimples. I was told not to scratch and had to have calomine lotion put on to me. I looked really funny with all these pink blotches every where. Mum sent a message round the estate, she got some pop and biscuits out. That afternoon the kettle was never off, all the mums from the estate called round with their kids and stayed for a cup of tea and a biscuit. It was just so that the kids could get the disease over and done with before they got older as it gave them protection for their life they thought.
When we went to the clinic we got concentrated orange juice and rose hip syrup too, this was to provide extra vitamin C for the children. The nurse would get a big wooden spatula and press your tongue down as you said "AAAHHHH" so she could check your tonsils and adenoids. Lots of kids had to go and have their tonsils out because they got tonsilitis, today they are just given a dose of antibiotics. When they went for the operation they were told just jelly and ice cream for a week after and I kept wondering why I did not get tonsilitis.
Colds were common and all the kids had runny noses in winter. We just got on with it and still played out in all the snow and wind. No one had asthma, if they did we never saw them. Tuberculosis was still quite common, there were special hospitals like the one at Rufford where the patients got plenty of fresh air, the windows were open no matter what the weather so that the bad air did not hang about in the wards.
Ormskirk was the nearest hospital and this was the old victorian work house with a lot of newer wooden huts added to it. It was a good walk from the raiway station to the hospital and when Dad was taken in with a slipped disc we had to go to Grandma Harts house while mum went to visit Dad. He was in a bed in traction, this meant he had his legs attached to weights to stretch his spine. I now know how he felt as I had the same treatment thirty years later. When he came out he had to wear a corset with great big steel stays in it to keep his back straight. At times at home I can remember him having to sleep with the bed room door under his side of the bed to make it hard enough for him.
I was usually very healthy and fit, I could run faster than all the other lads of my age on the estate. Once I was cornered by a boy and he said he was going to bash me black and blue because I had kicked his football in the canal. He came at me swinging and I ducked. I brought my fist up and hit him in the stomach, he went down winded and I was off. You could not see me for dust, I was home in no time flat. Next day he came up and said he wanted to race me as he had not known how fast I could run. We became real mates after that me and Stephen Lamb.
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