The Third Great Plague: A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday PeopleStokes, John H. (John Hinchman)
History
The Third Great Plague: A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People
Stokes, John H. (John Hinchman)
Syphilis
+Value of Expert Services.+--The factor of expert judgment in the care
and recognition of syphilis is an important one, and a progressive
public policy will not neglect to provide for it. The state, municipal
or hospital laboratory which professes to do Wassermann tests should not
be in charge of some poorly paid amateur or of a technician largely
concerned with other matters, or its findings will be worthless. Every
clinic and hospital should also attach to its staff an expert consultant
on syphilis on whom it can draw for advice in doubtful cases and for the
direction of its methods of work. Every city health board which
undertakes a serious campaign against syphilis should not be satisfied
merely with doing Wassermanns, but should enlist in behalf of the public
consultation of the same grade which it expects to employ in the
solution of its traction and lighting problems, and in the management of
its legal affairs. No one would think nowadays of placing a physician in
charge of a great tuberculosis sanitarium whose knowledge of the chest
was confined to what he had learned in medical school twenty or more
years before--yet in a parallel situation one often finds the subject of
syphilis handled with as little attention to the value of expert
knowledge. Expert service is expensive, and if the state wishes to
command the whole energy of progressive men, it must be prepared to pay
reasonably well for what it gets.
+Suppression of Quacks and Drug-store Prescribing.+--The suppression of
quackery is nowhere more urgent than in the control of syphilis. Every
important legislative scheme that has come into existence in recent
years has recognized this fact. The devil may well be fought by fire,
and reputable agencies should enter the field of publicity with some of
the vigor of their disreputable opponents. The brilliant success of this
scheme was admirably illustrated by the results of the recent efforts of
the Brooklyn Hospital Dispensary, which, by replacing the placards of
advertising quacks in public comfort and toilet rooms, and running a
health exhibit on Coney Island, attracted to a clinic where modern
diagnosis and treatment were to be had an astonishing number of young
people who would have fallen victims to quacks. The evil influence of
the drug store in perpetuating the hold of syphilis and gonorrhea upon
us is just being understood. The patient with a beginning chancre, at
the advice of a drug clerk, tries a little calomel powder on the sore,
and it either "dries up" and secondary symptoms of syphilis appear in
due course, or it gets worse or remains unchanged and the patient
finally goes to a doctor or a dispensary to find that his meddling has
lost him the golden opportunity of aborting the disease. If secondaries
appear, a bottle or two of XYZ Specific, again at the suggestion of the
all-knowing drug clerk, containing a little mercury and potassium iodid,
disposes of a mild eruption, and a year or so later a marriage with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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