The Tuberculin test of 1960
An incident that I recall from September 1960 was the mass screening of the immigrant children who entered school. All these children along with parents were herded to the health unit. I hid behind my mother's skirt and upon peeking out realized that amongst all the frightened children there were kids from my classroom. We had earlier received a test with an instrument that reminded me of a cow brander, but was actually a multi-needle puncture instrument called the 'tine test'. If after a certain number of days tiny bumps came up in a circle, then it was deemed that the child possibly had tuberculosis. They then were tested again with a single puncture test. The fact that children from Europe had been vaccinated for TB with a live vaccine before entry to Canada was not considered in those early times. We all came up positive. I didn't know what to make of any of this, other than to cry when my turn came up. I sat in my mother's lap as the woman in white pushed the single needle into the inside area of my arm. My eyes were huge and bewildered. To this day I still don't know how they finally figured out that none of us had tuberculosis.