Mumps?

Ireland reports record numbers of young people getting the mumps this year. Most are students in the 18-24 age group who are reporting inflammation of the salivary glands as the main symptom.

Geez, I thought mumps was a thing of the past. Looked up its history--hard to find on the web--but got this tidbit:

"...some older virology textbooks that still included some historical background information on viruses.

• Hippocrates described an outbreak of mumps in the 5th century B.C.


• Hamilton in 1790 emphasized the importance of orchitis and thought some CNS complications also were related to this glandular infection.


• In 1934 Johnson and Goodpasture demonstrated a filtrable virus was present in the saliva after successfully transmitting the virus to rhesus monkeys...


• Habel in 1945 was able to cultivate the virus in chick embryo ...

Wonder if the Irish were preoccupied with something else (like bombing each other?) 15 or 20 years ago and didn't bother to follow routine with the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (for kids 15 months of age or older). Anyway, if you're inclined, here's a site on modern Irish history. Might be fun to know some of that stuff for St. Patrick's day coming up.