Venereal disease

Before the antibiotic era, infections with syphilis and gonorrhea were common, but effective treatments were rare. The medications that actually had an affect on the disease were also toxic to the patient, heavy metal compounds being the best of them. Patent medicines were widely available in the USA in the 19th century- whether they worked or not.

'Venereal diseases' are infections spread through sexual contact. When the term was coined, in the 19th century, sexual activity was the only common "intimate" means of sharing body fluids. Since that time, with the advent of blood transfusion, organ transplant, and groups of substance abusers who share hypodermic equipment for injecting drugs, some of the same fastidious organisms that could only survive transmission from an infected person to a new host through body fluids shared in sexual contact, are now also able to survive through these other forms of transport.

Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) include both the venereal diseases and other infections. These other infections can be spread in many ways, but are so likely to be transmitted by sexual contact with an infected person that they are included in the category of sexually transmitted disease.

Venereal disease of bacterial origin

Syphilis

An electron micrograph of the spirochete, Treponema Pallidum, that causes syphilis.