Spirochete

In Chicago last week another blow was struck at the crumbling conspiracy of silence about syphilis. The Federal Theatre Project presented a propaganda play on the subject called Spirochete. Tracing the history of the disease and its cure from 1493 to 1937, boldly flashing microscopic plates showing the spirochete, or spiral syphilis germ, on a screen, the play for the most part proved good theatre, evoked a magnificent first-night response.

Present in the audience were Bacteriologist-Author Paul de Kruif (Men Against Death, The Fight for Life), State Representative Edward P. Saltiel, who sponsored the Illinois premarriage syphilis-test bill passed last year. In the play, Representative Saltiel is the hero of two scenes laid in the State Legislature. Outside in the theatre's lobby, the Chicago Board of Health had set up a testing station offering free syphilis tests. Some 15 first-nighters stepped up.

Wrote Clark Rodenbach of the Chicago Daily News about the first-night audience: "If someone had called out 'Is there a doctor in the house?' the audience would have risen as a man."

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