Your Family Needs Protection Against Syphilis

Poster

By: Anonymous

Date: c. 1936

Source: American Memory Project, Library of Congress. "Your Family Needs Protection Against Syphilis." 〈http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/wpahome.html〉 (accessed July 15, 2006).

About the Artist: The United States Library of Congress is the nation's official library, responsible for collecting and organizing historically significant documents, photographs, and digital media.

INTRODUCTION

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted bacterial disease. It has few symptoms during its initial stage, and in many cases individuals who are unaware of their infection pass the disease to others. The disease's second stage includes symptoms such as a rash, headaches, fatigue, and patchy hair loss. In many cases the symptoms are similar to other conditions, complicating the diagnosis.

In its final stage, syphilis may produce few outward symptoms but attacks internal organs including the brain, heart, and nervous system, resulting in paralysis, numbness, dementia, and blindness. In some cases the disease can be fatal. Syphilis can also be passed from a pregnant mother to an unborn child.

Prior to 1906, syphilis could not be conclusively diagnosed. That year, the first reliable test was developed, though it yielded a high rate of false positive results. Improved methods soon followed, and by the 1930s, syphilis testing was simple and reliable.

Efforts to prevent syphillis transmission, mainly through education of how it is contracted and spread, were especially acute during both World War I (1915–1918) and World War II (1938–1945), when mass movements of troops across continents brought perfect conditions for the bacteria to take hold in uninfected populations.

PRIMARY SOURCE

YOUR FAMILY NEEDS PROTECTION AGAINST SYPHILIS

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

Before the nature of syphilis was understood, numerous remedies were tried, most of them worthless. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, treatment with mercury or arsenic compounds were the most common treatment, with the substances either rubbed on the lesions, administered in vaporous form, or taken by mouth. The advent of antibiotics following World War II closed the circle, rendering the disease both detectable and treatable. The arrival of antibiotics such as penicillin, which was first widely used to treat wounds and infections including syphillis among American troops, eventually was expected to signal the end of many infectious diseases. While prudent use of antibiotics has produced a dramatic reduction in deaths from many diseases, misuse of antibiotics has also created problems. Ear infections are among the more painful health conditions experienced by children, and for many years doctors commonly prescribed antibiotics for ear infections. It is now known that ear infections are often caused by viral infections, making antibiotics useless. However the overuse of antibiotics is blamed for the increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, making some common conditions much harder to treat.

In 1999, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced an initiative to end syphilis in the United States. By 2001, syphilis rates were down overall, however they soon began to rise again, prompting a renewed emphasis on the problem. In 2006, the CDC announced new measures designed to target specific at-risk populations and create rapid-response measures to contain outbreaks before they could spread. In 2004, approximately 7300 new cases of syphilis were diagnosed in the United States.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Holmes, King K., et al., eds. Sexually Transmitted Diseases. New York: McGraw Hill, 1999.

Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York: The Free Press, 1993.

Periodicals

Krebs, Brian. "How a Lowly Fungus Saves Human Lives." Washington Post (March 11, 1998): H01.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Syphilis Elimination Accomplishments to Date." Together We Can: The National Plan to Eliminate Syphilis from the United States. May 8, 2006.

Web sites

American Social Health Association. "Sexually Transmitted Diseases." 〈http://www.ashastd.org〉 (accessed July 16, 2006).

Public Broadcasting Service. "Ehrlich finds cure for syphilis: 1909." 1998 〈http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm09sy.html〉 (accessed July 16, 2006).