Transmitted from person to person...

That was 80 years ago. Medicine wasn't nearly what it is today. And it still has quite a way to go - I hope. I do note, that it took another 40 years to stop the practice of giving HGH from dead donors to live people. I'm guessing it wasn't experimental -- it was accepted treatment. It seems no more bizarre than fecal transplants nowadays - which are medically accepted for certain situations. You can look them up.

I also note from the article that some people who received transplanted substances from cadavers suffered from Creuzfeld-Jacob disease - also known as Mad Cow disease. That's as nasty as it gets.

University College Hospital, in London? I was a patient there, in 1948. I was five. I had my tonsils out. I was there at least a week, maybe more. They kept kids in hospital a long time after that operation, then. Not my favourite place. I still remember a lot - even some of the kids there, by name - 75 years later. I remember a little girl named Stella, who had been there for quite a long time. Very cute child with dark curly hair, no more than three years old, with a hole in her throat -- a tracheotomy. Occasionally a nurse would hook her up to some kind of noisy machine that cleared mucus through the hole.

I was sad to see Stella have to spend time in that miserable place. For a long time after, I thought of how great it would be for her to go home.

 

And there was Daphne - a girl of six who was there for the same operation as I was getting. She had hers the day before mine, and I woke up to see her crying, and bleeding profusely from her mouth. A nurse was busy consoling her and cleaning up, changing the bed etc. It made me very apprehensive about what was going to happen after my operation. Fortunately - I experienced nothing but a very sore throat for a while.

I still hate that damn place. For 76 years, now.

 

I get it. Thanks, Steve.

 

Gee, Johann, did they even HAVE tonsils when you were a boy?