Medicine: A Wonderful Improvement

Twenty years ago the U. S. Public Health Service quietly began to print dowdy little pamphlets on birds, flowers & sex which it handed out to parents and schoolteachers for the price of a stamp. Later it dared dry little whispers on the cause and treatment of venereal disease. Three and a half years ago, when dynamic Thomas Parran was appointed Surgeon-General, he promptly starched up the publicity of the Public Health Service, egged on press and radio to utter the unutterable words "syphilis" and "gonorrhea."

Last fall doctors were startled to receive in the mail a slick new penny pamphlet called Gonorrhea the Crippler! garnished with diagrams and crammed with terse, practical advice. Other new pamphlets were Syphilis in Our Town, and Syphilis, Its Cause, Its Spread, Its Cure. Last week Dr. Parran proudly ushered forth the Service's most ambitious popular work: Communicable Diseases (25¢).

The little, in-page book was written by Dr. Arthur Marston Stimson, medical director of the Public Health Service. Designer was young Robert Brouse Thorpe Schmuck, who inserted graphic photographs of malaria victims, battered privies (see cut), rotting carcasses of animals.

Written in simple, direct English, the book is designed for high-school students. It gives accurate, scientific pictures of all contagious U. S. diseases, in alphabetical order, from amebiasis (amebic dysentery) to yellow fever, appends a glossary of scientific terms.

Although the book is lively and practical enough to hold most adults, 63-year-old Dr. Stimson, an ardent bird-lover, occasionally reverts to the goody-talk of pre-Parran days. Sample:

"But greater miracles [than the use of handkerchiefs] have occurred. A wonderful improvement has taken place ... regarding the practice of spitting on floors and sidewalks and in vehicles. Only those who have seen this improvement could believe it possible to influence the public in personal behaviour in so short a time. Transferring a cold to another person is the worst of bad manners."