Chicago’s War on Syphilis

Imagine the uproar if this were attempted today.

Full article here.

Chicago's War on Syphilis: 1937-1940

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jun 10, 2017
Category: Education | Civic Duties | Teenagers | 1930s | Diseases

Comments

I love these old stories from the archives of the Tribune. By the way, have you checked out the story about the radioactive gardening society? I used the messaging app at Facebook to send it to the Weird Universe page. It reminded me of the similar story here back on January 31st. If you didn't see it there, here's the link: https://goo.gl/YZD9sv

Posted by Fritz G on 06/10/17 at 07:12 AM

Many thanks for that tip, Fritz! Good catch!

Posted by Paul on 06/10/17 at 10:23 AM

I hope that the students stayed up late the night before, studying hard for the test.

Posted by BMN on 06/10/17 at 11:55 AM

What's truly startling here is that 78 high school kids were infected with syphilis. It's a small percentage of the total, but still...

Posted by Brian on 06/12/17 at 10:53 AM

Well, some of those may have been congenital. It was 1937; penicillin wasn't available yet.

Posted by Richard Bos on 06/14/17 at 10:55 AM

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