Dr. H.P. Moulton, our family doctor who was exempted from military service, made several house calls. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a bacterial illness, and measles is a viral illness. Though there are vaccines for both these diseases now, a vaccine wasn't available for either one during those years. Our farmhouse had no central heat, and it was such a cold winter that the water froze in the sink in the kitchen while our parents tried to keep us warm by the stove in the living room. We were feverish, coughing, and thoroughly miserable.
Current articles emphasize complications such as encephalitis, pneumonia, etc.
I don't think they emphasize enough the fact that secondary infections are very common. As the nearest hospital was 30 miles away, and our parents couldn't leave the rest of us, Ronnie was treated at home with sulfa drugs and eventually recovered after a very miserable illness. Fast forward several years to the late 1950s when I was in medical school in Louisville, Kentucky. For some reason I missed the lecture on measles in my pediatric rotation and, sure enough, when I took my oral examination during my senior year, one of the questions dealt with measles. Dr. Faulkner simply replied.