Syphilis and gonorreah from posters the early days of antibiotics

From How to Be a Retronaut, a fine gallery of scanned syphilis/gonorreah posters from the last days of each disease's reign of terror, before widespread use of antibiotics. If you're ever in Philadelphia and want to get a sense of how scary syphilis must have been in its day, head on over to the Mutter Museum, an exhibit of pathological curiosities, and have a gander at the cases of syphilitic skulls. I still get nightmares. Syphilis Posters, 1940s

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MORE: art • design • Old school • poster • Sex • std

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Ambiguity

A little off-topic perhaps, but I’ve always found it interesting that the carrying of smallpox to the new world is a never-ending topic of discussion, but the fact that gold and tobacco wasn’t the only things that the Europeans brought back is usually overlooked.

The new world is great and all, but poison ivy and syphilis? I could live without those…
- Lobster
  
  When all is said and done, I’d much rather have poison ivy than smallpox.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  I’d guess that intent figures heavily in to that. Although some contagion may have been accidental, there were also deliberate attempts to use smallpox as a weapon
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#18th_century
  
  To say that syphilis gets less attention than smallpox is like pointing out that there are a lot of accidental deaths in the logging industry, but somehow it’s the axe murderers that get all the attention.
  - Ambiguity
    
    I don’t know about that. At least smallpox can kill, which kind of puts you out of your misery. Poison ivy just makes you suffer, and if you’re like me — European descent without much immunity — that can entail melting flesh for months…
    
    [Eidt -- sorry, should have been a reply to Lobster.]
    - Lobster
      
      Yes, clearly it is better to die than to be itchy for months.
  - Ambiguity
    
    To say that syphilis gets less attention than smallpox is like pointing out that there are a lot of accidental deaths in the logging industry, but somehow it’s the axe murderers that get all the attention.
    
    Not saying that I agree with your analogy, but it could be argued that many more lives would be saved by focusing attention on things that are likely to kill you, as opposed to those that just make sensational headlines.
    - TooGoodToCheck
      
      uh, so, in general I agree with your statement about focusing on things that are actually likely dangers – I absolutely want public policy to be driven by QALYs and not the mediagenicity of a threat – but when we’re specifically talking about events that transpired more than 200 years ago, I’m pretty sure that anyone involved is past saving.
      
      to be 100% clear:
      
      - you said that the introduction of smallpox to the new world is a popular topic for discussion, while Syphillis to the old world is not.
      
      - I compared the accidental transmission of syphillis to logging accidents: very bad, unintentional, worth learning a lesson from.
      
      - I compared biological warfare via smallpox to axe-murder: very bad, utterly unconscionable, horrific, disgusting. I’m aware that smallpox was bad enough that it might have done just as much damage without deliberate human assistance, and I don’t consider that to be mitigating.
      
      - if you want to focus on things that are likely to kill you, how did poison ivy get involved, unless that was just kind of a tasteless joke?
      - Finnagain
        
        I want to party with this guy. Woot.
      - Kibo
        
        [...] how did poison ivy get involved, unless that was just kind of a tasteless joke?
        
        It’s part of Hallmark’s new line of “Ha ha, I gave you something extra” birthday cards, which come coated with a mixture of poison ivy and smallpox. I agree it’s a tasteless joke, unless you get the ones that also have some raspberry jelly mixed in. Those are yummy, at least until your tongue falls off.
  - adamnvillani
    
    “Some contagion may have been accidental”
    
    The native population of the Americas had already been devastated by smallpox more than two centuries before the two examples in the citation provided. From the link you provided:
    
    “Smallpox is highly infectious and does not require contaminated blankets to spread uncontrollably, and together with measles, influenza, chicken pox,
    and so on had been doing so since the arrival of Europeans and their
    animals. Historians have been unable to establish whether or not the
    Amherst plan was implemented, particularly in light of the fact that
    smallpox was already present in the region, and that scientific
    knowledge of disease at that time had yet to develop an understanding of
    infection vectors, nor in the case of smallpox a full acknowledgment of
    the protective effect of a cowpox infection.”
    
    No doubt about it, the history of Europeans’ and Americans’ interaction with Native Americans is a shameful one on the part of the white people, full of slave-driving, stolen land, deliberate genocide, broken treaties, etc. But even if the early explorers had been the gentlest, kindest souls on earth who treated the Native Americans with the utmost respect, disease would still have spread like wildfire through the Western Hemisphere.
- CLamb
  
  It is a matter of debate amongst scholars whether syphilis first appeared in the new world or the old. What is agreed upon is that it was first found in Europe at around the same time the new world was discovered.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KFKUBBDFVWXWYOXUYRXRXGWOJA Joseph

These posters and many more WPA-era wonders are available via the Library of Congress’ American Memory website. Check http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/wpahome.html
riceagain

Damn, that looks like a North Korean propaganda poster
- Mister44
  
  o_0 - no it doesn’t really – not in the least. It is some great design.
  
  Also – if you all value your sanity and begin checking your head for holes and bumps every 5 min – do not google “syphilis skull”.
Bart

Interesting timing on this, as a fully anti-biotic resistant gonorrhea has been discovered in this wild. With no antibiotic to cure it, you can expect gonorrhea to be making a comeback big time. Over the years recently, gonorrhea has been becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat it and this was simple a matter of time. Natural selection in action.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/11/scientists-discover-drug-resistant-gonorrhea-superbug/
liquidstar

I hate to break up the smallpox discussion, but this poster is not near as cute as we might like: “Rates of syphilis infection across Canada have rocketed more than 900% between 1997 and 2006, according to data from the Public Health Agency of Canada.”http://chealth.canoe.ca/channe…Antibiotics being what they are today (increasingly useless) I’d say this poster needs to go back up lol.
Kibo

“Bureau of Social Hygiene”. I had so much trouble loading one of those into the car at Ikea. I have the Klørbfarch Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Gondlunk Footstool of Telekinetic Entropy here. What I’d really like to get would be a Felfbulat Rug of Eternal Damnation. That’d keep people from wiping their muddy boots on it.
Mister44

For poison Ivy sufferers – ZANFEL is the ONLY way to go. OMG the stuff is a godsend. It’s pricy – but worth it. I don’t think the generic works nearly as well.
http://www.facebook.com/RedBoots Juta Stokes

I am disturbed by the lack of a question mark.