Since my grandmother herself had been a nurse, my grandfather freely wrote about stuff like….

V.D. of course makes up a fair proportion of our work. We are very fortunate in have a Capt. H. (1st Lieut till a week ago) who is really interested in gonorrhea & lues [an archaic term for syphilis]. Lues now gets a 20 day crack of intensive therapy then a once a week for a spell and seem to be brought really under control—a great contribution I feel. Gonorrhea now gets treated in the units with the men on duty with sulfadiazine and if they don’t clear up they are hospitalized. Here they get a second course, then switch to sulfathiazole. If they still don’t clear up they are given fever therapy—wrapped up in blankets & rubber sheet & put under a light cradle. This brings the temp up to 105 in about 2 hours, then the lights are shut off and they are kept wrapped up for about 6-8 hours. This really cooks up the bugs & they mostly clear up in 24 hours.

As this Rx is rather rigorous & some people are temperamentally unsuited for it, a certain few can’t take fever therapy. These are given penicillin. This is given intramuscularly at the rate of 10,000 Oxford units every 1 hr for 10 hours. At the end of 5-6 hours the smears are negative and at the end of the Rx the discharge has stopped. Isn’t that something. We’ve been very fortunate in being able to have a certain amount of the stuff to work with. It is scarce and we feel very good about being able to put it on.