Second-century physician Galen coined the name for the age-old partner of syphilis​—gonorrhea. Its telltale symptom is a burning sensation during urination. But, says the U.S. Department of Health: “In women . . . symptoms may not be sufficient to provoke the patient’s suspicion or motivate her to seek care.” And in men the symptoms generally disappear in a couple of months. Nevertheless, doctors say gonorrhea can still work its way into the blood system and infect vital organs, and women are especially prone to gonorrhea complications. Said The Journal of the American Medical Association: “The most severe of these complications is pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) . . . Almost 1 million women are treated for PID in the United States each year.” With what result? “Involuntary infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and chronic pelvic pain.”

“As a result of antibiotic therapy,” pronounced Dr. John F. Mahoney in 1949, “gonorrhea has almost passed from the scene as an important clinical and public health entity.” These words typified the faith the medical profession​—and the public at large—​bestowed upon the new wonder drugs such as penicillin. Convinced that science had dealt STD a deathblow, many doctors simply lost interest in studying it. In Central and West Africa UN-sponsored programs to eradicate syphilis and other related diseases seemed so effective that officials even relaxed their surveillance activities.

The rapid changes of the 1960’s thus caught almost everyone off guard. Between ‘1965 and 1975 the number of reported cases of gonorrhea in the United States tripled.’ (CDC) The rise in the tourist trade, spawned by jet air travel, helped spread disease from country to country. A worldwide STD epidemic was therefore brewing, but as Theodor Rosebury wrote in Microbes and Morals, “The appalling discovery was made that young doctors and medical students knew practically nothing about [STD].”