STD’s are not new, in fact US Army medical records dating back to the Revolutionary War show just how significant soldier losses were due to venereal diseases. The incidents of VD during the Civil War over a two-year period show just how prevalent the problem was. The Union Army documented 100,000 cases of gonorrhea. During World War I, the Army lost 7 million person-days and discharged more than 10,000 men because they were sick from STDs. Once Penicillin was available in the mid-1940s, such infections were treatable. National security, and the need for healthy soldiers is what caused the Military to start distributing condoms and to aggressively market prophylactics to the troops in the early 20th century.
The military took its STD problem and prophylactics campaign seriously, but that didn't mean its VD campaign couldn't show a little humor. One US Navy training film from 1942, USS VD: Ship of Shame, urged sailors to "put it on before you put it in." Click through our photo gallery of Government posters for all kinds of venereal disease propaganda. Some of them are real gems.
