Off topic but when I went to school in the 50s / 60s my secondary school was one of the biggest in Newcastle (UK) and we had:
One Asthma boy - we all were alerted to watch out and help if he had an attack
One polio boy who had to sleep in an iron lung - ditto look out if he needed help and get a teacher immediately
One tuberculosis (cured) girl who was thin, gorgeous and hot like you wouldn't believe. No particular requirements but explained why she was so skinny.
Nowadays there are millions of asthma kids and if you feed half a peanut to many of them they kark it on the spot. Until we moved into the council flat our bath hung on a nail on the kitchen door and bath night (singular) consisted of Dad then Mam then the two boys. We went last because after a day of climbing trees and generally rolling in shyte the water was always black. Ha.
And no we didn't live in a cardboard box in t'middle of t'road (that was before the tenement with the bath on the nail)
Edit: I agree with Manticle, because we were coming out of the absolute devastation of WW2 there was a huge and genuine need for government to step in and do great works for the people, especially in Europe and the UK, and that's where the Nanny state started to come in, and eventually got hijacked by the public service from where most of this crap emanates. So very good moves such as the panel on bread and flour (adding iron and vitamins to flour and bread in the UK after the War) laid the foundation for future idiocies such as the cholesterol fraud, the food pyramid, etc. There should have been a Nanny society 'cut off date' of around 1970 I reckon but the whole thing just kept breeding and breeding.
end rant.
