1950's Medicine and Health | Venereal Disease

War and Sex.

In the decade after World War II, reported cases of both syphilis and gonorrhea dropped dramatically. There were two reasons. First, during war-time many people tend to relax their standards of sexual behavior, with the result that venereal diseases increase. With the return to normality, there is a corresponding decrease in sexually transmitted diseases. The pattern also occurred during and after World War I.

Case Finders.

The second reason for the decrease was that after World War II public health offices, bolstered by generous federal, state, and local budgets, devised a system called case finders to diagnose venereal disease in patients and then to locate and treat every person who had sexual contact with a disease carrier. The case-finder system actively sought out disease carriers and cured them, effectively controlling the spread of disease.

The Cost of Success.

The system was so...