''Biggest Problem"

A pow-wow on syphilis and gonorrhea attracted 2,500 social sanitarians to Manhattan last week. Significantly they ignored morals, invoked statistics and publicity as their best weapons against the nation's venereal disease problem. As a result of open discussion, members of the American Social Hygiene Association hope that syphilitics and gonorrheics will cease to hide from doctors, will have themselves healed either privately or at free public clinics. Last week 577 communities had 827 such free clinics.

To prove their argument, social sanitarians cited the following venereal statistics for representative cities:

Norfolk Cleveland Knoxville Richmond New Orleans San Francisco Peoria Baltimore Nashville St. Louis Birmingham Dallas Memphis Total

Rate per 1,000 population

Syphilis Gonorrhea Total

4.0 2.8 6.8

5.3 2.8 8.1

5.0 4.2 9.2

5.3 4.2 9.5

5.8 4.7 10.5

6.2 5.0 11.2

6.4 6.1 12.5

9.3 4.0 13.3

10.0 5.3 15.3

8.8 7.0 15.8

10.4 5.8 16.2

8.9 7.9 16.8

10.9 9.0 19.9

7.3 4.9 12.2

In effect these figures indicated that, for the U. S. at large, about twelve people out of every 1,000 are venereally infected--seven with syphilis, five with gonorrhea.

Lida Josephine Usilton of the U. S. Public Health Service, who compiled these figures, believes that there is more venereal disease proportionately in small rural communities than in big cities. She estimates that there are approximately 493,000 individuals constantly under treatment or observation for gonorrhea and 683,000 for syphilis in the U. S.

At last week's meeting of sanitarians Dr. Alfred Potter, Brooklyn syphilologist, estimated 10,000,000 U. S. cases of syphilis, active and arrested. Cried he: "In the area of the U. S. in which syphilis has been reportable since 1920 there have been reported 35,000 more cases of syphilis than of scarlet fever, 79,000 more cases than all forms of tuberculosis, 500,000 more cases than of diphtheria and five times as many cases as typhoid fever."

Dr. John Levi Rice, New York City's Health Commissioner for the past two years, restlessly waited his turn to address the 2,500 social sanitarians. Exclaimed Dr. Rice: "Syphilis is today the biggest single problem facing my health department. There are 380,000 cases of syphilis in New York City and only one in ten is under medical care." Last year 57,000 new cases of syphilis were reported to Dr. Rice's office. But he believes at least 118,000 new cases were contracted in the metropolis. He asked the Board of Estimate for $254,000 to fight venereal disease this year. The Board gave him $151,000. Last week the Works Progress Administration added 100,000 Federal dollars to New York City's venereal disease kitty.

"The biggest barrier in the pathway of advancement and the control of these diseases," according to Dr. Rice, is the fact that social custom taboos their discussion in the press or over the radio. Cried Dr. Rice last week: "We live in an atmosphere of high-power publicity. Let us have more of it for spreading the scientific facts on syphilis."

In 1934 National Broadcasting Co. refused to allow Dr. Rice to use the word syphilis in a speech on public health. Soon after, Columbia Broadcasting System similarly prevented New York State's Health Commissioner Thomas Parran Jr. from mentioning syphilis in a radio speech (TIME, Dec. 3, 1934). According to the broadcasters, a family or mixed social group might be shocked by mention of syphilis, denounce the broadcasters.

That considerable progress has been made in advancing the public discussion of venereal disease in the press, if not by radio, was evident after last week's pow wow. In reporting that meeting the careful New York Times boldly put the word syphilis into a subhead line over its news story and the New York Daily News came out with a ringing column-long editorial headed "Syphilis" and listing the free clinics for the treatment of that disease.

What makes socially minded doctors rage is the fact that the exact causes and cures of both gonorrhea and syphilis are known.

Gonorrhea results from a germ shaped like a coffee bean, which is generally but not always transmitted by sexual intercourse. Certain compounds of silver readily kill the germ of gonorrhea if used soon after the disease is contracted. If neglected, gonorrhea may do irreparable damage to primary sex organs, may cause valvular heart disease, rheumatism of the knees.

Syphilis, far more virulent and dangerous than gonorrhea, is usually contracted in the same manner, is also subject to control and cure. The late Dr. Paul Ehrlich of Germany discovered that the spirochetes of syphilis were destroyed by organic compounds of arsenic, especially by salvarsan ("606") or neosalvarsan ("914"). Twenty injections of neosalvarsan, administered over a period of three to twelve months, is now the standard treatment for syphilis.

If syphilis is not treated immediately after it is contracted, its spirochetes invade the body, cause devastating destruction. The germs attack the brain, causing paresis, and the spinal cord, causing locomotor ataxia. No nerve, muscle, organ or bone is immune to syphilis. Consequently any ailment may be related to a latent syphilitic infection, and careful doctors give most patients a blood test.

To cure syphilis, doctors recently discovered that artificially induced fevers, in addition to arsenicals, are efficacious. Such fevers also promote the cure of gonorrhea. In both cases the heat possibly stirs up the defensive mechanisms of the body. Or, more probably, spirochetes and gono-cocci die when the internal temperature of the body is raised for a short period to 107DEG F. Such heat is generated by injections of simple proteins, by blasts of hot. humid air, by prolonged tubbing in hot water, by high-frequency electric current or by short radio waves.

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