WEBVTT 00:00:03.190 --> 00:00:06.290 [U. S. Public Health Service 1798] 00:00:06.290 --> 00:00:07.780 [presents] 00:00:07.780 --> 00:00:15.250 [Three Counties Against Syphilis] 00:00:15.250 --> 00:00:21.960 [Direction - Philip S. Broughton, Medical Supervision - L. E. Burney, M. D., United States Public Health Service] 00:00:21.960 --> 00:00:36.900 [Narration - Alois Havrilla, Musical Score - James C. Bradford, Traditional Negro Music - Hampton Institute Choir and Glee Club] 00:00:36.900 --> 00:00:52.250 [Narrator:] South of Savannah the waves of the Atlantic break on the shores of the golden isles of Georgia. Once the rendezvous of Buccaneers, later seat of rich manorial plantations, these islands have character and charm. 00:00:52.250 --> 00:01:05.030 Witness the picturesque ruins of the old slave hospital where Negro slaves were treated more than a century ago. 00:01:05.670 --> 00:01:17.030 Westward the marshes of Glynn and the Sidney Lanier oak under which the poet sat while he wrote the songs that have made these marshes famous. 00:01:17.030 --> 00:01:31.980 On the main, its harbor sheltered by the sea island is the old town of Brunswick, county seat of Glynn County, rich in traditions, important part of the old south providing seafood and industrial center of the new. 00:01:31.980 --> 00:01:42.540 Here are important crab and shrimp fisheries, canneries to preserve the catch for shipment. 00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:58.590 One of the South's largest wood pulp mills, a modern plant for distillation of pine oil and other wood by-products... a thriving veneer and box industry altogether giving employment to thousands of workmen. 00:01:58.590 --> 00:02:11.750 Brunswick, center of a rural area, is typical of communities throughout America. Here a demonstration in syphilis control can be carried on, a test program for work at other places, south or north. 00:02:11.750 --> 00:02:27.310 The United States Public Health Service joined with the health departments of Georgia and Glynn County to set up such a project. This is not the story of syphilis, the disease; it is the story of public health organizations who stamp out syphilis. 00:02:27.310 --> 00:02:53.190 In Brunswick the work resembles that of any city. Private doctors are given free drugs to treat all their cases of syphilis, so that those who can afford to pay but little may go to their own doctors. Thus the private physician treats those who can't afford to pay at all. 00:02:53.190 --> 00:03:13.930 At the health department, a modern public clinic treats 275 patients each week free of charge. Systematic efforts have been made to find syphilis, bring it to treatment. Blood tests are a part of school health examination. Every child here has already been tested. 00:03:13.930 --> 00:03:44.610 In small communities in the outlying region the story is the same. Here at St. Simon's, 35 patients come to the clinic each week. And rural doctors receive free drugs and financial aid for the treatment of poorer patients just as do the doctors of the town. 00:03:44.610 --> 00:04:03.750 Up beyond the towns, beyond the doctors' offices, beyond even roads are the woods. This is a rural land, a land of forests, fewer than ten people to the square mile, deep in the piney woods. How would one reach these people? 00:04:03.750 --> 00:04:15.920 How reach those who work at country saw mills, who gather gum from the pine trees and tend the turpentine stills? Here are people who have neither means for travel to urban centers, nor leisure to travel. 00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:30.340 The health officer must reach these too if he is to meet his responsibility for the protection of the community. If this mountain will not come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain. 00:04:30.340 --> 00:04:44.240 Hence, a mobile clinic that travels throughout three counties, Camden, McIntosh and Glynn. Let's follow its journeys day by day. 00:04:44.240 --> 00:05:01.700 Monday 107 miles, 106 patients. Tuesday 110 miles, 129 patients. Wednesday 102 miles, 118 patients. 00:05:01.700 --> 00:05:24.730 Thursday 40 miles, 40 patients. Friday 100 miles, 90 patients. Saturday 60 miles, 44 patients. For the week: 519 miles, 527 patients at 24 clinics. 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:45.430 This silver top is the symbol of the service. Along the road, the clinic itself becomes a bus to bring patients who live at intermediate points to the treatment center. 00:05:47.130 --> 00:06:03.210 The clinic stops, the patients gather. 00:06:03.210 --> 00:06:32.750 Next to church the biggest event of the week. Find syphilis, bring it to treatment, that is the story of control. The treatment renders the patient not infectious, stops the spread of the disease through the community. 00:06:32.750 --> 00:06:49.200 It's a far cry from the swift and shining trailer to the oxcart, but many come to the clinic in this way, while many more come on foot, some walking ten miles or more for treatment once a week for 70 weeks. 00:06:49.200 --> 00:07:03.880 They gather at that rural forum, the country store, to compare notes on this new contribution to the life of the community. 00:07:03.880 --> 00:07:27.780 The school bus serves in a new capacity, it brings more patients to the clinic. 00:07:27.780 --> 00:07:40.960 Doctors on wheels, the clinical methods of the finest hospitals reach out to serve a rural life. 00:07:40.960 --> 00:08:05.490 Inside the trailer is a completely equipped clinic. Electric sterilizers, refrigerator, fans, and lights are fed by a 110-volt generator in the tow car. No time is wasted in setting up for work. Three minutes after arrival treatment can begin. 00:08:05.490 --> 00:08:19.170 The clinic serves as a health center not only for syphilis. This boy is being immunized against typhoid fever. At crowded stops the county nurse sets up her stand nearby. 00:08:19.170 --> 00:08:50.540 In the forward part of the trailer, blood is taken for laboratory tests. Arsphenamine is administered. Two patients may be treated at once. Here a specimen of blood is taken for a test. 00:08:50.540 --> 00:09:01.010 Arsphenamine injected into the blood kills the germ of syphilis and the patient can no longer transmit the disease to others. 00:09:01.010 --> 00:09:20.080 Each patient gets simply written detailed instructions so that the illness will be fully understood. 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:39.400 Behind the curtain in the rear of the trailer is a complete examination room with its own equipment and sterilizer. Here bismuth is administered. Bismuth prevents the tragic relapses of heart and brain. 00:09:39.400 --> 00:09:51.210 At health department headquarters in Brunswick, darkfield examinations are performed. A little serum from the first sore is examined under the microscope. This is the earliest possible diagnosis for syphilis. 00:09:51.210 --> 00:10:06.200 The earlier treatment is begun, the surer the cure. 00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:21.310 It would take thirty-five hundred of these syphilis germs laid end to end to make an inch -- spirochaeta pallida, a killer at large. 00:10:21.310 --> 00:10:30.560 At Waycross, sixty miles from Brunswick, Georgia has a modern branch laboratory. Here blood tests are performed for the Tri-County project. 00:10:30.560 --> 00:10:39.270 Tubes filled with blood specimens come from the trailer, from the Brunswick clinic and from private physicians. 00:10:39.270 --> 00:10:54.570 An automatic pipette measures serum into test tubes for the Cobb test. Trained laboratory technicians are essential. Laboratories can't afford to make mistakes. Let's see the result. 00:10:54.570 --> 00:11:09.830 Negative, no syphilis. Negative, no syphilis. Positive reaction. Note the heavy particles in the tube -- that means syphilis. 00:11:09.830 --> 00:11:23.220 But one must be very sure. Let us doublecheck with a Wassermann test. That is another blood test for syphilis, technically a little different from the Cobb. Let's see what it will show. 00:11:23.220 --> 00:11:29.840 A milky fluid like this in the tube on the right would mean syphilis. The clear tube is a check tube and here are the tests. 00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:48.340 Watch the tube on the right: negative, no syphilis. Negative, no syphilis. Positive, here our case of syphilis is verified. Even the layman can see the difference in these two tubes. 00:11:49.750 --> 00:12:03.150 The project is organized for finding cases and holding them in treatment. It takes 70 weeks to ensure a cure for syphilis. Even with free treatment it is not always easy to keep patients coming week after week. 00:12:03.150 --> 00:12:29.650 The trailer helps, but there are four follow up workers, two white and two colored. The house-to-house canvass has proved also a most effective means of getting blood specimen. 00:12:29.650 --> 00:12:44.150 Behind the project, too, is education. One must carry this story to the people. Midwives deliver 400 babies a year in these counties. Well-trained by the health department, they are licensed by the state. 00:12:44.150 --> 00:12:56.740 Here they learn about the blood tests and actual demonstration. They carry forth the story and bring mothers in for prenatal blood tests. 00:12:56.740 --> 00:13:06.060 The grocery man wraps up the clinic announcement with every purchase. 00:13:06.060 --> 00:13:13.360 [Paper flier reads: Colored people, do you have bad blood? Free blood tests, free treatment by County Health Department and Government Doctors. You may feel well and still have bad blood. Come and bring all your family. Friday, Tarboro 10:00 to 12:00 A. M., Woodbine... 1:30 to 2:30 P. M.,... Waverly 2:30 to 4:30 P. M. Every week at the same time.] 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:23.460 The country store shares a place among its tobacco signs for clinic hand bills. 00:13:23.460 --> 00:13:32.040 [Paper flier reads: Colored people, do you have bad blood? Free blood tests, free treatment by County Health Department and Government doctors. You may feel well and still have bad blood. Come and bring all your family. Wednesday, Jones 10:00 to 12:00 A. M.,?... 1:00 to 2:00 P. M. Every week at the same time.] 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:41.280 Wherever the workers go, they tell the story of the clinic to willing ears. 00:13:41.280 --> 00:14:02.380 How bad blood makes people sick, how it destroys heart and brains, how it makes babies die, how the blood test finds it, and how the treatment if taken long enough is certain cure. 00:14:02.380 --> 00:14:24.650 The blood test serves a double purpose. First, it is a dragnet for syphilis. Second, it is an educational device. Blood specimens are taken in the turpentine woods, at factory gates, on the shrimp wharves, at the docks of the [inaudible] fisherman. A man who has seen the blood test loses his fear. The man who hasn't had one wants it. 00:14:24.650 --> 00:14:37.650 Everyone talks about it; the blood test becomes a demonstration and a symbol. 00:14:37.650 --> 00:15:06.050 Youth faces its problem more directly, honestly, spontaneously then did its father. Here, the blood test carries its message to a country dance hall. 00:15:06.050 --> 00:15:22.150 But the greatest help comes from the churches, Pastors are ever willing and glad to cooperate. They urge their people to join in the program. 00:15:22.150 --> 00:15:45.300 They tell them of a disease which threatens health and life and a generation yet unborn. They urge that the message will be carried forth to the countryside, that all may know and walk in the light of health. 00:15:45.300 --> 00:15:55.420 They themselves take the blood test as a demonstration and urge their parishioners to follow them. 00:15:55.420 --> 00:16:12.480 Such is the story of a community mobilized, a community which met syphilis with the weapons of medicine and modern public health. Whatever you may do in your community, in these three counties of southeastern Georgia, the days of syphilis are numbered. 00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:23.440 Syphilis will be the next great plague to go. 00:16:23.440 --> 00:18:15.000 [Music and singing, and images of the clinic bus traveling down the road and people walking through the woods and along paths, and traveling in an ox-drawn cart, to make their way to town for health care.] 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:21.580 [Produced by - the United States Department of Agriculture, Camera - Eugene Tucker, Editing - Raymond Evans, Sound - Reuben Ford, MCMXXXVIII] 00:18:21.580 --> 00:18:34.330 [The End]