Those of us of a certain age remember the “diseases of childhood” – measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox.

My parents lived in fear of polio, until Jonas Salk invented a vaccine in 1955.

As a kid I dreaded the shots – but I understood why I needed them.

I was a fledgling scientist, Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters my favorite book in elementary school.

I learned, early on, how vaccines work.

Before measles vaccine was invented, I had the infectious disease for a month and nearly died; my little sister got shots. My third-grade classroom once emptied due to flu. And my arm bears the distinctive scar that prevented smallpox, vanquished from the world by 1977.

Lapses in vaccination can bring some preventable infectious diseases back.

Here’s a dozen.

Chickenpox My two eldest daughters........

© The Leader Herald