Colliding Bodies: Prostitutes, Soldiers, and Venereal Diseases in Colonial Egypt.

This article explores attempts to control outbreaks of venereal diseases among prostitutes and imperial soldiers in Cairo and Alexandria leading up to and through World War I. Seeking to move beyond the usual colonial framing of center-periphery, it considers two British imperial outposts-Egypt and Australia-in conversation. The war brought thousands of Australian soldiers to Egypt, leaving their mark on Egypt and becoming marked by their time there, sometimes in indelible and deadly ways, as bodies and bodily fluids collided, and microbes passed between colonial and imperial subjects. The article argues that the highly racialized and classed system for regulating foreign and local prostitution that British officials implemented in Egypt to protect soldiers exacerbated rather than contained the spread of venereal diseases.

Papel das Enfermeiras na Abordagem às Doenças Venéreas no Contexto da Reforma Sanitária Brasileira (1920-1924) / Papel del Enfermero en el Abordaje de las Enfermedades Venéreas en el Contexto de la Reforma Sanitaria Brasileña (1920-1924) / Role of Nurses in Approaching Venereal Diseases in the Context of the Brazilian Health Reform (1920-1924)

A primeira escola de Enfermagem do Brasil, denominada Escola Profissional de Enfermeiros e Enfermeiras, inspirada na Escola francesa de Salpetirère, foi criada em 1890. Entretanto, até o início do século XX, a Enfermagem no Brasil ainda era exercida com bases puramente empíricas, realidade que seria completamente reformulada até o ano de 1924 [Fragmento de texto] (AU)

[Mercury or sarsaparilla. On the pharmacotherapy of venereal diseases by Johannes Franc (1649-1725) and Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742)]. / Quecksilber oder Sarsaparille. Zur Arzneimitteltherapie venerischer Erkrankungen bei Johannes Franc (1649­1725) und Friedrich Hoffmann (1660­1742).

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, ancient humoral pathology was gradually complemented by new concepts of medical theory. Two important theories that emerged in this context were iatrochemistry and iatrophysics. The physician Johannes Franc (1649-1725) from Ulm and Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), the first professor of the medical faculty of the Fridericiana in Halle (Saale), are representatives of these concepts. In their writings, they conveyed specific instructions for broader therapeutic treatment including various forms of medication. The iatrochemist Franc recorded his therapies in his medical diary. The treatment methods of the iatrophysicist Hoffmann are written down in his twelve-volume Medicina consultatoria. Using the examples of gonorrhea and syphilis, the goal of this paper is to analyze, on the basis of both records, how the two physicians applied the new medical theoretical concepts in the treatment of these diseases. Franc and Hoffmann held the view that these two venereal diseases represent two separate entities. Thus both physicians departed from the traditional theory that gonorrhea was a stage of syphilis. Accordingly, they used different medication therapies for these diseases. Franc and Hoffmann referred to humoral pathological ideas, the discrasia of the humors in expounding the causes of the diseases. The same applies to their basic therapeutic approaches: they implemented humoral pathological concepts in their therapeutic practice. Bloodletting, sweating cures, and water cures as well as strict diets were prescribed. Nevertheless, differences in their treatment methods are clear. Franc consistently supplemented humoral pathology with ideas of iatrochemistry, prescribing treatment of gonorrhea and syphilis with mercury. Hoffmann, on the other hand, explicitly warned against treating gonorrhea with mercury; however, he was not fundamentally opposed to the use of drugs for the treatment of syphilis.

Peter the Great and sexually transmitted diseases.

Shortly after syphilis appeared in Europe at the time of Columbus' voyage to the New World, the big pox, as it was often known, became a serious issue in Russia for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Members of the Russian royal family were made aware of the disease from adolescence onward. Czar Peter the Great had many sexual contacts and could have contracted any number of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) that were quite common in his era. Nevertheless, contributions analyzed from available sources by his contemporary doctors, and later from medical analyses, reveal no evidence that he had contracted syphilis or any other STD. Most likely, he died from acute renal failure due to urinary tract obstruction.

Noddle Pox: Syphilis and the Conception of Nosomania/Nosophobia (c. 1665-c. 1965).

Hypochondriac or phobic reactions to venereal disease, specifically syphilis, have invited over three centuries of medical reification and nosological reframing. This bibliographic overview establishes that the early specification and psychiatricization of early modern concepts of melancholy and hypochondriasis, imaginary syphilis or syphilophobia, animated the early respective territorializations of venereology, infectiology more broadly, neurology, and mental medicine. Together with mercuriophobia and a wider emergent clinical sensitivity to sexual angst, the diagnosis, while evidently only sporadically made, functioned as a durable soundboard in the confrontation of emergent medical rationale with various confounders and contenders: medically literate and increasingly mobile but possibly deluded patients; charlatans and putative malpractitioners; self-referral laboratory serology (after 1906); and eventually, through psychoanalysis, the patient's unconscious. Requiring medical psychology early on, syphilology became and remained self-conscious and circumspect, attentive to the casualties of overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and iatrogenesis. Finally, patient apprehension led to makeshift forms of "moral treatment," including fear-instilling and placebos.

Las secuelas patológicas de los campos de concentración entre los refugiados españoles en Francia retos diagnósticos y terapéuticos en el Hospital Varsovia de Toulouse (1944-1950) / No disponible

A partir de la primavera de 1945, el Hospital Varsovia de Toulouse dispensó asistencia médica a miles de refugiados republicanos españoles que permanecían exiliados en el sur de Francia. Este hospital había sido fundado en el otoño de 1944 en las afueras de Toulouse tras la invasión del Valle de Arán en el marco de la llamada Operación Reconquista de España. Revisando los numerosos casos clínicos que aparecen en las páginas de la revista Anales del Hospital Varsovia (1948-1950), se advierte que muchos pacientes presentaban enfermedades contraídas en los campos de concentración a causa de las pésimas condiciones de vida en un régimen de confinamiento. En su práctica asistencial, los médicos observaban cuadros clínicos insidiosos, de difícil diagnóstico, que tras sucesivas pruebas clínicas y de laboratorio revelaban enfermedades carenciales larvadas (debidas a la malnutrición), infecciones crónicas ocultas (tuberculosis y parasitosis intestinales) y enfermedades de transmisión sexual

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Availability of Injectable Antimicrobial Drugs for Gonorrhea and Syphilis, United States, 2016.

We estimated the availability of the injectable antimicrobial drugs recommended for point-of-care treatment of gonorrhea and syphilis among US physicians who evaluated patients with sexually transmitted infections in 2016. Most physicians did not have these drugs available on-site. Further research is needed to determine the reasons for the unavailability of these drugs.

U.S. Public Health Service STD Experiments in Guatemala (1946-1948) and Their Aftermath.

The U.S. Public Health Service's sexually transmitted disease (STD) experiments in Guatemala are an important case study not only in human subjects research transgressions but also in the response to serious lapses in research ethics. This case study describes how individuals in the STD experiments were tested, exposed to STDs, and exploited as the source of biological specimens-all without informed consent and often with active deceit. It also explores and evaluates governmental and professional responses that followed the public revelation of these experiments, including by academic institutions, professional organizations, and the U.S. federal government, pushing us to reconsider both how we prevent such lapses in the future and how we respond when they are first revealed.

Despite Being "Known, Highly Promiscuous and Active": Presumed Heterosexuality in the USPHS's STD Inoculation Study, 1946-48.

The Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) was a short-term deliberate exposure experiment into the prevention of venereal diseases. Between 1946 and 1948, over 1,300 Guatemalan prisoners, psychiatric patients, soldiers, and sex workers were exposed to syphilis, gonorrhoea, and chancroid. USPHS researchers initially proposed hiring sex workers to "naturally" transmit venereal diseases to male subjects who would then be given various prophylaxes. The researchers were interested in studying the effectiveness of new preventative measures. In other words, the USPHS study was designed to transmit venereal diseases heterosexually from an "infected" female body to the men who, it was assumed, were sexually isolated subjects. However, the researchers did record instances of male-to-male disease transmission among their subject populations, instances that challenged the presumption of heterosexuality on which the study was based.

Effective Reparation for the Guatemala S.T.D. Experiments: A Victim-Centered Approach.

Discussion of reparations for U.S.-Guatemala STD experiments of the 1940s and 50s should be informed by a range of international and U.S. reparation experiences, so that features that impair the effectiveness of repair are avoided, and features that enhance effectiveness of repair are emulated. Two features have contributed to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of repair elsewhere but have not been critically examined in relation to the Guatemalan experiments: Whether experimental subjects or their families have the opportunity to participate in reparations processes, and whether any group of experimental subjects is intentionally denied recognition. Three advantages of victim participation are explored, and a critique provided of one narrow delimitation of victims. Even if political and moral failings ultimately prevent reparations for Guatemalan experimental subjects, an emphasis on effectiveness and victim-centeredness should nonetheless shape reparations for other, future victims of human rights abuses in experimentation.

Interventions to reduce risk for sexually transmitted infections in adolescents: A meta-analysis of trials, 2008-2016.

BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have evaluated the efficacy of interventions to reduce risk for sexually transmitted infections in adolescents in recent years, but their global effects remain unknown since 2008, the last date of a comprehensive review of prior studies. AIMS: This study aims at evaluating the efficacy of interventions to promote sexual health, reduce STIs and unplanned pregnancies targeted to adolescents available after 2008; and analyzing the moderators of their global efficacy. METHODS: We searched electronic databases and manual searches of some journals focused on STIs in May 2016. The studies evaluated the efficacy of interventions to reduce sexual risk in adolescents (age range: 11-19) anywhere in the world. Effect size of the relevant outcomes for sexual risk was calculated for every study. Analyses incorporated random-effect assumptions for each outcome. The homogeneity in the results was examined with the I2 statistic and its associated 95% confident interval. RESULTS: Data from 63 studies (59,795 participants) were analyzed for behavioral and non-behavioral outcomes. In the short term, interventions had a positive impact in sexual health-related knowledge (Hedges'g = 1.01), attitudes (g = 0.29), self-efficacy toward condom use (g = 0.22), intention to refuse sex (g = 0.56), condom use intention (g = 0.46), and condom use (g = 0.38). In the medium term, positive effects observed at the short-term were maintained, although effect size significantly decreased in all variables. In the long term, interventions improved condom use (g = 0.47). Moderators of the efficacy are discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Sexual health promotion interventions are effective to promote sexual health through increasing condom use. Effects on non-behavioral variables tend to decrease over time, while condom use increased in the long-term. Interventions should focus on the long-term efficacy, especially in behavioral and biological measures.

100 years of STIs in the UK: a review of national surveillance data.

OBJECTIVES: The 1916 Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases was established in response to epidemics of syphilis and gonorrhoea in the UK. In the 100 years since the Venereal Diseases Act (1917), the UK has experienced substantial scientific, economic and demographic changes. We describe historical and recent trends in STIs in the UK. METHODS: We analysed surveillance data derived from STI clinics' statistical returns from 1917 to 2016. RESULTS: Since 1918, gonorrhoea and syphilis diagnoses have fluctuated, reflecting social, economic and technological trends. Following spikes after World Wars I and II, rates declined before re-emerging during the 1960s. At that time, syphilis was more common in men, suggestive of transmission within the men who have sex with men (MSM) population. Behaviour change following the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s is thought to have facilitated a precipitous decline in diagnoses of both STIs in the mid-1980s. Since the early 2000s, gonorrhoea and syphilis have re-emerged as major public health concerns due to increased transmission among MSM and the spread of antimicrobial-resistant gonorrhoea. Chlamydia and genital warts are now the most commonly diagnosed STIs in the UK and have been the focus of public health interventions, including the national human papillomavirus vaccination programme, which has led to substantial declines in genital warts in young people, and the National Chlamydia Screening Programme in England. Since the 1980s, MSM, black ethnic minorities and young people have experienced the highest STI rates. CONCLUSION: Although diagnoses have fluctuated over the last century, STIs continue to be an important public health concern, often affecting more marginalised groups in society. Prevention must remain a public health priority and, as we enter a new era of sexual healthcare provision including online services, priority must be placed on maintaining prompt access for those at greatest risk of STIs.

Vênus nos braços de mercúrio, bismuto e arsênio Notas históricas sobre sífilis gestacional antes da penicilina / Venus en los brazos de mercurio, bismuto y arsenio: Notas históricas sobre sífilis gestacional antes de la penicilina / Venus in the arms of mercury, bismuth and arsenic: Historical notes on gestational syphilis before penicillin

Resumo Buscou-se neste artigo debater sobre os saberes e as práticas médicas referente à sífilis, em especial à sífilis gestacional, no início do século XX. O objetivo central foi apresentar o debate médico travado em uma das principais faculdades de medicina do país acerca das consequências da sífilis para a mulher gestante e para o feto ou criança. A natalidade foi amplamente defendida por médicos que acabavam por condenar algumas práticas de mulheres que levariam a comprometer a gravidez. A metodologia de análise foi estabelecida a partir de um estudo de caso sobre a tese defendida em junho de 1913, na cadeira de clínica obstétrica, pelo médico recém-graduado Arnaldo Cavalcanti de Albuquerque. Constatou-se pela documentação que os tratamentos do período para sífilis gestacional eram ainda bastantes precários e as anotações médicas extrapolavam os limites clínicos, adentrando muitas vezes no plano de cobrança de valores morais.

Resumen Se buscó en ese artículo debatir sobre los saberes y prácticas médicas referentes la sífilis, en especial a la sífilis gestacional, a principios del siglo XX. El objetivo central fue presentar el debate médico desarrollado en una de las principales facultades de medicina del país acerca de las consecuencias de la sífilis para la mujer gestante y para el feto o niño. La natalidad fue ampliamente defendida por médicos que acababan por condenar algunas prácticas de mujeres que llevarían a comprometer el embarazo. La metodología de análisis fue establecida a partir de un estudio de caso sobre la tesis defendida en junio de 1913, en la cátedra de clínica obstétrica, por el médico recién graduado Arnaldo Cavalcanti de Albuquerque. Se constató por la documentación que los tratamientos del período para sífilis gestacional eran todavía bastantes precarios y las anotaciones médicas extrapolaban los límites clínicos adentrando muchas veces en la dimensión de cobranza de valores morales.

Abstract The aim of this article was to discuss the knowledge and medical practices regarding to syphilis, especially gestational Syphilis, in the beginning of the 20th century. The aim goal is to present the medical debate that took place in one of the main medical schools of the country about the consequences of syphilis for the pregnant women and for the fetus or child. The natality was widely defended by doctors who eventually condemned some practices of women that would lead to compromise pregnancy. The methodology of analysis was established from a study case on the thesis defended in June 1913, in the chair of obstetric clinic, by the recently graduated physician Arnaldo Cavalcanti de Albuquerque. It was found by the documentation that the treatments for the period for gestational syphilis were still very precarious and the medical notes extrapoleted the clinical limits charging several times moral values.

[Venereal diseases in a "general practice" in the 17th and early 18th centuries]. / Venerische Erkrankungen in einer "Allgemeinarztpraxis" im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert.

The diary of the town physician Johannes Franc (1649-1725), handwritten in Latin, gives-among other diseases-an overview of sexually transmitted infections affecting citizens in Ulm such as syphilis and gonorrhea. Franc reported on his own experiences in the diary and also included many theoretical details on the causes of the diseases and the corresponding therapies, including ethical considerations. Even in ancient times, there are indications of venereal diseases. However, at the latest with the outbreak of syphilis around the year 1495, the treatment and control of the spread of venereal diseases became an important task of medicine. Before gonococci were detected by Neisser in 1879, sexually transmitted diseases were generally seen as a single disease. However, at the beginning of the 18th century, there were several doctors who treated syphilis and gonorrhea as separate entities. Franc was one of them. Examining the milestones in the history of syphilis and gonorrhea, the present article reviews the existing theories that tried to explain the origins of these diseases. Franc's treatment patterns are illustrated. Franc's case reports indicate a fundamental change in the perception of STIs at the end of the 17th/beginning of the 18th century.

Treating the Secret Disease: Sex, Sin, and Authority in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases.

This article looks at cases of venereal disease from the early 1700s and how healers presented themselves as shrewd interpreters of patients' bodies and souls. Because the disease was so stigmatizing, patients were said to be unreliable narrators of their own symptoms and health histories. Practitioners, in turn, exhibited diagnostic expertise by sagely navigating such constraints. They characterized themselves as medical detectives who gathered clues and made diagnoses in spite of patients' alleged lies and omissions. Such work entailed moral integrity, astute observations, and the ability to persuade patients to divulge their most shameful sexual secrets. These findings illuminate how a particular disease shaped constructions of medical expertise, as well as the details of early modern medical practice that we rarely have the privilege of seeing.

Preventing syphilis in the 16th century: the distinguished Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562) and the invention of the condom.

By the end of the 15th century, syphilis had reached epidemic proportions in Europe. Unable to ascertain its causes, physicians resorted to superstition. At the beginning of the 16th century, the sexual transmission of the disease was established. Initially, the principal measure of infection control was sexual abstinence and mutual fidelity. However, during the same period the Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562) proposed a method of preventing syphilis transmission: the medication-soaked linen sheath. Thus was born the idea of a mechanical barrier against sexually transmitted diseases: the condom.