1930's Medicine and Health | Shadow on the Land

Nonfiction work

By: Thomas Parran, M.D.

Date: 1937

Source: Parran, Thomas. Shadow on the Land: Syphilis, the White Man's Burden. New York: Waverly, 1937, 59–69.

About the Author: Thomas Parran, M.D. (1892–1968) was the director of the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Venereal Disease in 1932, when the Tuskegee Experiment began. He was serving as U.S. surgeon general at the time he wrote this book.

Introduction

No one knows the origin of syphilis. What is clear is that Africans brought to the United States as slaves did not suffer from the disease before they encountered white men. Because far more African Americans than whites were poor and uneducated, they were less likely to receive treatment when they did contract syphilis. The treatment did not cure the disease, but studies had by 1932 proved that it reduced death rates.

The 1930s...