Today Is...First VD Clinic Opens

There was once a time when both penicillin and athlete's-foot cream were but a distant gleam in some chemist's father's eye so humans knew that those who have sex will sometimes catch the clap. It's not a new problem, indeed, some of the most famous people to walk the earth have been plagued with odd discharges and strange burning sensations such as Blackbeard, Leo Tolstoy, Al Capone, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles VIII of France, Christopher Columbus, Benito Mussolini and Ivan the Terrible but it wasn't until the First World War that Government decided to do something about it.  
The First clinic specifically for Venereal Diseases opened today in 1747, a time when science had not yet discovered the real causes of disease and Syphilis was unknown in Europe until infected sailors among the crews of Christopher Columbus’s ships returned from their first voyage to the New World, having contracted the disease after having sex with Native Americans. 
The first documented widespread outbreak of syphilis was in Italy around 1495 and was spread to France by soldiers returning from battle in Italy.  The rest, as historians say, is history.
Syphilis became a major health concern in Europe, including Britain, and in the early years, was a much more deadly disease than it is today. Europeans had no immunity built up, and deaths from syphilis were common and horrible, with victims exhibiting sores over their entire body, arthritic-like symptoms and madness before death.
Prior to the development of penicillin in the 1940's there were no real cures and by 1916 the syphilis death rates were as high as 46 per million, 17% of pregnancies in families with syphilis resulted in miscarriages or stillbirths, 30% of children in blind schools were there due to syphilis and 50% of infertility in women was due to gonorrhea while with as many as 5% of Britain's Army suffering from a Sexually Transmitted Disease and over 400,00 troops admitted to hospital so in 1916, the Local Government Board issued the Public Health (Venereal Diseases) Regulations.
Specialist clinics were rapidly established alongside returning military medics and sexual health services flourished as did use of condoms although Worldwide, more than 357 million new cases of curable STIs among adults aged 15–49 years are reported so one slogan i remember from my childhood that still resonates today is: 'Don't be A Fool, Cover Your Tool'.