A U.S. Public Health Service poster signed Karsakov and catalogued at 1941 builds a figure from clippings of patent-medicine advertisements, shown pouring red liquid onto a spoon, and answers them in one line: "No home remedy or quack ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea. See your doctor or health officer" (NAID 515076).
A figure made of ads
On a dark blue field stands a figure assembled from yellow newspaper clippings. It pours red liquid from a bottle onto a spoon. The clippings are the point: they are advertisements for secret cures, and the archive transcribes as many as can be read.
UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
[clippings:] Dr. Welch's Gon-Med / Recommended For Use In Treatment Of GONORRHEA / This can be used in your home and no one need know your condition. / All correspondence is strictly confidential. / SENT IN PLAIN WRAPPER [...]
BLOOD DISEASE CONTROLLED WITH HOME TREATMENT [...]
NO home remedy or quack ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea
see your doctor or health officer
[imprint:] VD 7-R 41
Who is selling what
Two kinds of persuasion are on this sheet. The first is the advertisers'. Their copy promises privacy ("no one need know your condition," a plain wrapper) and results without a doctor, and it leans on a testimonial from "Mr. Sam C." of Los Angeles. Those are the selling points the poster sets out to answer.
The second is the government's answer. The archive tags card stacking, because the clippings are gathered to make one case, and fear appeal. The government's own claim is a flat negative about home remedies and quacks, and the sheet does not argue it; it lets the ads discredit themselves and sends the reader to "your doctor or health officer."
A fair use of a public office
This is one of the better kinds of government poster. It names a danger, quotes the people selling it in their own words, and points to help. It does not threaten the reader or ask him to inform on anyone. Someone ashamed of an infection is exactly the buyer a plain wrapper targets, and the sheet speaks to him without contempt.
The record does not say how many were printed, where they hung, or whether the advertisers named here were prosecuted. A later Navy sheet on this site, Penicillin for Gonorrhea Works 95 Times Out of 100, makes a treatment claim of its own.
Sources
FRAME object record, No home remedy or quack ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea, 1941. U.S. Public Health Service (Karsakov). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1412, NAID 515076, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
