Stanley Plotkin recalls a night in 1957, during his pediatrics internship, when a father brought a gravely ill toddler into the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital on his shift. The 3-year-old was struggling to breathe. Before Plotkin could even examine the little boy, he died.
The child had contracted Haemophilus influenzae type b, a nasty bacterial illness that can cause mild symptoms in some children, but triggers dangerous, more systemic disease in others — things like meningitis, pneumonia, and sepsis. In the case of the boy Plotkin saw, it induced swelling of the epiglottis, the flap at the base of the tongue that prevents food from entering the airways.
