Roald Dahl anti-measles letter

[didymus]

Found this interesting, Ronald Dahl author of James the Giant Peach, Willy Wonka, &c lost his daughter to measles and wrote this letter to parents, later distributed as a pamphlet in the UK.

roalddahlfans.com/articles/meas.php

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

  "Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.
  "I feel all sleepy," she said.
  In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

  The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the  doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop  the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
  On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to  make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of  theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I  was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a  reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe  vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask  your doctor to administer it.

[more . . .]

PS – not posting this to stir up vaccination debate! Please don’t go there.

 

[Exiled_Child]

Found this interesting, Ronald Dahl author of James the Giant Peach, Willy Wonka, &c lost his daughter to measles and wrote this letter to parents, later distributed as a pamphlet in the UK.

roalddahlfans.com/articles/meas.php

PS – not posting this to stir up vaccination debate! Please don’t go there.

I love Roald Dahl! This is a terribly sad story, but I’m glad to have read it. He had a very interesting and entertaining life, but this is the first I’ve read about Olivia.