This year, the euphemistically named San Francisco City Clinic celebrates 100 years of diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted diseases. That's 10 decades of inspecting orifices and creating cutting-edge new media, from all the way back when old media was shockingly new. And City Clinic did it all while making sexual health sound fun and, well…sexy.
In honor of the anniversary, the San Francisco Department of Public Health circulated this historical document, with the headline "Our Nation's Health Endangered by Poisonous Infection." Reading it, the shocking thing is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't.
You might not believe that sexting and new media have anything in common with the way the world worked 100 years ago, back before the days of either antibiotics or birth control. But get a load of this quote from Dr. Julius Rosenstirn, chairman of the advisory committee, in the 1913 pamphlet wherein he passionately defended the work of the clinic, then called The Municipal Clinic: "The taboo that educators have put on the theme of sexual relations, on a thorough instruction in the origin of human life and its procreation, has resulted in the profoundest ignorance among the laity of these most vital matters."
He added, "Do these same good people really believe they can safeguard the fiercely dominant sex call of awakening youth with mild and vague precepts?"
So what was it that threatened the very existence of the fledgling clinic back in those days? What forced Rosenstirn to come to its defense? Was it simply talking about sex?
Noooo. It was more, much more than that. The thing that got the clinic in deep, deep trouble was a program to teach women how to diagnose themselves. And not just how to diagnose, but also how to act on that information, an approach that would resonate today with e-patients all across America.
Read more...
In honor of the anniversary, the San Francisco Department of Public Health circulated this historical document, with the headline "Our Nation's Health Endangered by Poisonous Infection." Reading it, the shocking thing is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't.
You might not believe that sexting and new media have anything in common with the way the world worked 100 years ago, back before the days of either antibiotics or birth control. But get a load of this quote from Dr. Julius Rosenstirn, chairman of the advisory committee, in the 1913 pamphlet wherein he passionately defended the work of the clinic, then called The Municipal Clinic: "The taboo that educators have put on the theme of sexual relations, on a thorough instruction in the origin of human life and its procreation, has resulted in the profoundest ignorance among the laity of these most vital matters."
He added, "Do these same good people really believe they can safeguard the fiercely dominant sex call of awakening youth with mild and vague precepts?"
So what was it that threatened the very existence of the fledgling clinic back in those days? What forced Rosenstirn to come to its defense? Was it simply talking about sex?
Noooo. It was more, much more than that. The thing that got the clinic in deep, deep trouble was a program to teach women how to diagnose themselves. And not just how to diagnose, but also how to act on that information, an approach that would resonate today with e-patients all across America.
Read more...
