1918 WWI booklet When They Come Home Venereal Disease Pamphlet

Description: Very good condition. Gifts & Exchange Section Harvard College Library Cambridge, Mass. 02138 U.S.A WHEN THEY COME HOME Your whole community will be at the station 2*8 "when the boys come marching home." You are planning to honor these men with parades and celebrations of all kinds. Are you making sure that the profiteers of vice are not planning to take advantage of the days of festivity to dishonor them before they get settled again in the normal ways of life? When men and girls are changing their occu- pations and ways of life, when war disciplines are being removed and when spirits are buoyant, the greatest temptations to self-indulgence and dangerous pleasures occur. Cities an towns throughout the country face now the most impor- tant crisis-the biggest emergency yet encoun- tered in the fight against venereal diseases. WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US "Our ignorance and failure in handling the problem of venereal diseases constitute the greatest crime of American civilization. This is the clearest lesson of the war." This was the conclusion of a medical officer in charge of the physical examinations of drafted men as they were admitted to one of our great army camps. He had been a physician in civil life, but not until he had seen with his own eyes the hundreds of diseased young soldiers as they filed by his ex- amining table did he realize the extreme serious- ness of the venereal problem. Before the war, physicians and public health officers knew that gonorrhea was every year causing thousands of cases of blindness among infants, countless surgical operations on women, and sterility in both men and women; that syphilis was being transmitted to offspring, caus- ing physical and mental defectives, that it was a prolific cause of locomotor ataxia, paralysis, paresis or softening of the brain, insanity, mis- carriages, diseases of the heart, blood vessels and other vital organs. But people generally did not know these things and few medical measures were taken. The war opened our eyes. 2 ----------- 3 ----------- THE AMERICAN WAR PROGRAM Our military authorities did not evade the problem of venereal disease as Europe, for two years, had done to its sorrow; they attacked it. Prudery and ignorance were no longer allowed to cover up widespread sickness and suffering. The old shams and fakes about the "sex neces- sity" and the need of licentious pleasure were thrown into the discard. From first to last the Government maintained the position accepted by the best medical authority, viz., that continence is entirely compatible with health, and that irreg- ular sex intercourse with prostitutes is the most prolific cause of venereal disease. The denizens of the underworld were driven out of the zones around each army camp and naval station; all the men in camps were given extensive instruc- tion; those exposed and infected were given prompt treatment; and the seven co-operating agencies furnished interesting, wholesome recre- ation. This program brought results. The venereal rate was lowered below that of any army of any nation in the history of the world. VENEREAL DISEASES A PEACE PROBLEM The examinations of drafted men showed that five men came into the army with venereal disease for every one who contracted it after he was in the army. And the one who contracted it in the army, probably, was infected in a civil com- munity outside of military control. Venereal dis- ease is, therefore, not a military problem or war epidemic; it is a civilian problem and a peace problem, taken over by military authorities for the period of the war only where civil communities had failed in their duty. The draft and physical examinations of men merely resulted in digging underneath the sod of our civil life and showing that out of sight in every man's town, in every man's state there has been going on yearly a waste of manhood, womanhood and childhood by the ravages of these preventable diseases; diseases 3 ----------- 3 ----------- Clinics, hospital wards, reformatories, homes for the feebleminded, education and recreation cost cold, hard cash, but it can be proved that they are much cheaper in dollars and cents than the enormous industrial and human waste caused by the spread of venereal diseases. This is not a job for sentimentalists or fly-by- night enthusiasts. IT IS A TASK FOR HARD-HEADED BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MEN AND WOMEN. IT IS A JOB FOR CITIZENS WHO FEEL RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR COMMUNITY AND THEIR NATION IN TIMES OF PEACE AS WELL AS WAR. AFTER THE WAR With war's final end, many war buildings, war jobs and institutions will go to the scrap heap. But every item in the program of venereal disease control is as necessary to successful peace as to successful war. Don't scrap your patriotism and community spirit in this matter. There should be no peace for prostitution, no truce for the "ten- derloin," no armistice with venereal diseases. Make your blows knockouts against vice. The soldiers, when they come home from the trenches, will be the first to join you in your fight. *Boston CLINICS FOR TREATMENT OF VENEREAL DISEASES Massachusetts General Hospital. Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. Boston Dispensary. Boston City Hospital. * Attleboro Sturdy Memorial Hospital. *Brockton-Brockton City Hospital. *Fall River City Hospital. Fitchburg. Holyoke. *Lawrence Board of Health City Clinic. *Lowell Lowell Corporation Hospital. * Lynn Lynn Hospital. New Bedford. *Pittsfield-House of Mercy Hospital. Springfield. *Worcester City Hospital. Subordinate Clinics: Haverhill. Newburyport. *Salem-Salem Hospital. *Indicates Clinics already in Operation v. D. rampmet SB of H B

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