Over 57-year career, pediatrician says, vaccines changed everything

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- If you think today's world can be a perilous place for children, imagine life in the 1950s. Seat belts in cars were not widely used, much less required. A kid wearing a bike helmet would have been mocked mercilessly. The child-resistant safety cap for prescription medication wasn't invented until 1967. "Back then, we'd get a lot of poisonings," said Dr. L. Frank Kellogg, who opened his pediatric practice in Garden Grove, Calif., in 1956, along with his partner, Dr. Robert Patterson. "In the early years of the practice, we had a deal: He'd sew up the lacerations if I'd pump the stomachs." Kellogg described how a child would have this done: "You'd restrain them so ...