In April, we posted about "Deadly Diphtheria," an acute bacterial infection spread by personal contact, was the most feared of all childhood diseases. One in ten died from the disease, which suffocated its victims via a membrane that grew over the larynx. One of it's greatest horrors? It struck children under the age of five.
Diphtheria vaccination first appeared in the 1890s, but only became widely used in the 1920s. Tracheotomy (opening the throat) and the intubation technique developed by Cleveland native Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer in the 1880s, which kept the airway open with a tube, provided last-resort means of...