Those are given in the buttocks. You might well have been exposed to scarlet fever or some other such infectious disease.

given pre-emptively back then? ( I hope I'm not accidentally aging you!)

You cannot age me any more than I already am, LOL!

I've never heard of PCN being given pre-emptively. NO idea.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Tetanus is still sometimes given in the buttock. It's an injection that requires a bit of time to absorb and in children, it could well have been considered less painful in the buttock.

Now tetanus vaccine is given in combination with diphtheria and pertussis, but it's still an intramuscular injection. Kids have more muscle bulk in the buttock than any other injection site.

all five of us and we would have been up-to-date on polio and DPT shots because Mom was good about well baby visits. She's had rheumatic fever as a child and had life long heart damage as a result. it makes sense she would have been concerned about scarlet fever.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I remember getting a couple of shots in the butt when I was a kid; no idea what they were. The only one as an adult was gamma globulin after an exposure in the hospital I worked at.

shots in the butt. That was late 60's.

There was a local epidemic that originated in a petting zoo.

was given in 1960.

Immunizations are typically low volume and can be given in a child's tiny deltoid.

Before they came up with oral and IV antibiotics, the butt was it. You were likely traumatized because the old penicillin, especially, was the consistency of that brown glue they make out of old horses and the high viscosity required a large bore needle.

They sucked. I had 'em too.

a friend of my grandmother's was returning to Ireland for a visit and went to her doctor to get a small pox vaccination. She asked to have it on the hip to avoid having a scar on her arm - the doctor asked "what if the immigration official wants to see the scar?"



......she got it in the arm.


FWIW - I had several small pox vaccinations and I get queasy just thinking about it!

(oddly enough, i don't think any of them scarred - maybe none of them took!)

She graduated from nursing school in 1937, I think. Back in the day, 1950's and early '60's, she had ready access to penicillin and I recall her somewhat routinely giving us kids penicillin shots in the butt.

It's also important to know that back then the dosage (I believe the measure was simply called units) was incredibly low, compared to what it became over time. I don't even know if regular penicillin is ever given anymore.

because most bacteria were not yet resistant.

I can recall being aware by the early '60's that the effective dose of penicillin had already grown significantly from when it had first been introduced. And there wasn't the overusage of anti-biotics back then that's occurred in recent decades.