…will be mocked sixty years from now. Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but the US military was so heavy-handed about treating/preventing syphilis and gonorrhea during World War II for the following reasons:
- Both diseases are easy to catch and hard to detect in their initial stages. Syphilis, of course, eventually drives you crazy and kills you; gonorrhea can be transmitted to children via the mother and make them blind (I didn’t know that one).
- Like it or not, prior to AIDS prostitutes were generally more likely to have STDs than the general population*.
- Conventional treatments prior to WWII involved silver nitrate for gonorrhea, and arsenic compounds for syphilis. Yes, they were highly unpleasant.
- Antibiotics? Sure, they had antibiotics. Sulfa drugs, too. What’s more important: that private with the clap, or that private with the gut wound?
Hence the propaganda.
I wonder about Cracked.com sometimes. Surely they contemplated what that ‘procurable’ meant?
Moe Lane
*I am given to understand that this has abruptly changed in the USA after the rise of AIDS, but I cannot confirm this.
I wouldn’t bet on the STD distribution having changed all that much. The high-end call-girls? Probably. The street-walkers? Hell no.
Heck, there are plenty of ads from our time that I mock *now*. Most of the Geico and the Progressive ads, just for starters.