Syphilis and the League of Nations have more in common than you might think. Both were dumped into the dustbin of history in the 1940s: syphilis by penicillin, the League of Nations by the Second World War. But the connection goes further than chronological coincidence. Before the war, the League took a deep and direct interest in syphilis, with its Health Organisation arranging conferences on the laboratory diagnosis of the disease. These were not talking shops. Technical experts met in Copenhagen in 1923 and 1928, and in Montevideo in 1930, to test large numbers of blood samples in the laboratory, to evaluate methods of treatment and to compare their findings with clinical diagnoses.

LRB 11 September 2003 | PDF Download