Edward Schecter remembers overhearing the doctors saying he was going to die.

His fever had spiked to 106 degrees. Doctors put him in a bathtub full of ice, then gave him a last-ditch antibiotic whose side effects could have killed him. Before his ordeal was over, he would lose more than 20 pounds.

That August morning, when Eddie was too feverish to go to camp, his parents called their family physician, Dr. Sidney Rothstein.

A Polish Jew who had escaped the Holocaust, Dr. Rothstein had seen a lot of the disease in wartime Europe. He personally drove his patient to a hospital, and ultimately insisted that the boy be given chloramphenicol, a controversial antimicrobial that in rare cases caused fatal suppression of bone marrow — but probably saved Eddie’s life.