Edith Houghton didn’t have her heart set on medical school. But after she graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1900, she packed her bags and headed for Baltimore. Her mentor, M. Carey Thomas, had taken an interest in Edith, who excelled in chemistry and math, and encouraged her to pursue further studies at Johns Hopkins Medical… Read more →
Tag: venereal disease
From Alfred Fournier to Anthony Fauci: Targeting Public Health Messages to Teens
Communication about the causes, effects, and prevention of COVID-19 is plentiful in the United States. Press briefings and congressional testimony have aired live; news stories offer highlights and guidance to the public. An increasing number of resources help parents talk with their young children about the pandemic, too. None of the media discussing COVID-19, however,… Read more →
New Medical Tourism on St. Kitts
The late William Halford of Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine spent his life developing what Hollywood director Agustín Fernández called a herpes “miracle treatment.” Theravax is an experimental herpes vaccine that, in 2013, Halford began testing both on himself and on friends, family, and volunteers. Inside hotel rooms across Illinois, Harford injected Theravax into… Read more →
Sex on the Border: Policing Women in Red Light Districts
In 2001, a Dallas Observer reporter stepped into a shadowy, smoke-filled room and narrowed his eyes to see through the blinking neon lights and deconstruct the American traveler’s fascination with the modern sex industry along the border. The image he projected, of women lined up against a crumbling wall in a run down bar, tells… Read more →
VD in the Archives
For something that played such a prevalent role in life at the front, sex and venereal disease (or VD) have been largely underrepresented thus far in the public remembrance of the centenary of the First World War. In 1916, one in five of all admissions of British and Allied troops to hospitals in France and… Read more →
Parental Guilt & STIs: A Historical Look
If you’ve been watching television lately, you’ve probably seen Merck’s recent ads for Gardasil, the most widely used vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV). The commercials begin with a young person in their 20s stating they have cervical cancer or have been infected with HPV. From there, we see them get progressively younger through family… Read more →