My trip to the travel clinic today reminded me how blessed we are to live in America, where many diseases that ravaged our forefathers have been eradicated.  Of course, in other places in the world, they still exist and thus we must be immunized against them. 

So today I was immunized against Yellow Fever - a horrible disease that once shut down the United Stated Federal government when an epidemic swept through Philadelphia in the mid 1790's.  President Washington retreated to his Viriginia home and because the constitution clearly stipulates that the federal government cannot meet in any place beside the designated place, the government was immobilized and not able to function.  Almost a third of the city's population died that summer.

I also had to start an oral vaccination against typhoid, which is largely unheard of in the US nowadays, but which claims the life of a large percentage of people who get it.  Wilbur Wright of airplane fame died of typhoid about a decade after the airplane was invented.

Thankfully, we have immunizations to prepare us for life in areas where these long gone diseases still exist..  Now if we could find a way to get them in without a needle . . .