Page 28 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Pneumonia and pessimism

Between my birth and the time that I began to go to school, I can
only remember one event. I was about the age of three, but the
strong impression it made was of the occasion, not the date. Toward
the end of the winter season I took sick with pneumonia, and it
lingered into the spring. At that time we did not know the word
pneumonia; we called it inflammation of the lungs. I had a high fever
and almost passed out. The bedroom I was in had no heat and the
brick walls were sweating, drops of water running down them.
Doctors were not as common as we see them here, and neither were
drugstores. To see a doctor, with his goatee, cane, and spectacles, was
a great event in the neighborhood. The nearest drugstore was fifty
blocks away and looked more like a bank building, with mahogany
walls and office fixtures. A scale like a goldsmith’s was on the
counter, mounted on a marble pedestal, with little shiny brass weights
fitted in a row in a nice little mahogany chest. Pills were not known
then, just powders in little envelopes, which were poured into a glass
of water forced into the patient’s mouth, young or old.
In the beginning my grandmother plastered my chest and back
with mustard plasters, rubbed my body with olive oil imported from
France, and covered me with a layer of cotton. When my sickness
took a turn for the worse, my mother and grandmother ordered the
young men in the synagogue to pray and say psalms for my recovery.
When the crisis came, a doctor was called. I can still remember the
powders they gave me, so bitter that they were forced into my mouth
by holding my nose and pinching it. It was still the winter, which is
very cold in that country. The doctor gave hope only if there were
early warm weather and sunshine. We had double windows, which
were tightly shut so I could get no fresh air, yet I pulled through and
recovered.
I was the only boy in the family at that time, and everything was
done to build me up. I was weak and thin, a skeleton, living at first on
chicken soup, a delicacy and the only vitamin or medicine known
then in our country. I was the fledgling of my grandmother, and she

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