The Conquest of Infectious Disease.

The most important health change during the century was the successful conquest of many infectious diseases through both public health measures and scientific medical advances. Diphtheria, typhoid, and dysentery no longer threatened Americans with terrible epidemics, yet venereal diseases remained uncontrolled. Modern antibiotic treatments for them were not available in the 1930s; but control was also defeated by a conspiracy of silence that prevailed in the country over issues of sexual morality. During World War I, newspapers and magazines dramatically publicized the problem, but in the years after the war the antivenereal campaign began to fail. If all conditions due to syphilis had been reported as such, it was believed that syphilis would have been found to be the leading cause of death in the United States. It was responsible for 10 percent of all insanity, 18 percent of all diseases of the...