Medical Library’s Contagious Exhibit Sure To Go Viral March 5, 2010

She may be…a bag of TROUBLE. Syphilis – Gonorrhea. U.S. Public Health Service,United States, 1940s.Photomechanical print: color; 41 x 51 cm. Artist: “Christian.”A sultry, heavily-made-up woman squints provocatively, while smoking a cigarette. WWII posters usually addressed men, and fingered promiscuous women as the source of contagion. They are an unholy alliance of science, art, medicine, politics, history, advertising, and propaganda. Dramatic images use visual shorthand to convey danger, disease, and death. Shadows, crowds, skeletons, vermin,…