# Prostitution Spreads Syphilis and Gonorrhea, a Public Health Service sheet that blames one party

Prostitution spreads syphilis and gonorrhea is a 1944 U.S. Public Health Service poster, VD 16, signed Karsakov. A small woman in a light dress and hat, her skin tinted green, stands in a red glow against dark purple, her shadow stretched beside her (NAID 515252).

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      Prostitution spreads syphilis and gonorrhea

      Prostitution Spreads Syphilis and Gonorrhea, a Public Health Service sheet that blames one party
      A 1944 Public Health Service poster, VD 16, signed Karsakov: a green-tinted woman in a red glow over "Prostitution spreads syphilis and gonorrhea."

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
      Date1944Made byFederal Security Agency, U.S. Public Health Service (artist Karsakov)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 515252; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Federal Security Agency, U.S. Public Health Service. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1587 (NAID 515252).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Prostitution spreads syphilis and gonorrhea is a 1944 U.S. Public Health Service poster, VD 16, signed Karsakov. A small woman in a light dress and hat, her skin tinted green, stands in a red glow against dark purple, her shadow stretched beside her (NAID 515252).

## What is on the sheet

Content note: the poster names prostitution as the source of venereal disease and draws a woman as its emblem.

The figure is small and alone: a woman in a pale dress and a hat, standing in a pool of red light against a deep purple ground. Her skin is tinted green, and her shadow runs out long at her side. The text is a single sentence and an issuer's block.

Prostitution

spreads Syphilis and Gonorrhea

[signature: KARSAKOV]

[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944-O-577242]

Federal Security Agency

U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

VD 16

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515252, local id 44-PA-1587, Record Group 44.

## Who issued it

The sheet names the Federal Security Agency and the U.S. Public Health Service, and carries the code "VD 16." The artist signed as Karsakov; the record gives no first name. The archive lists the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as to warn or inform, under health and home-front themes. It gives no print run and no place of display.

## What it leaves out

The archive tags fear appeal, and the colouring does that work: green skin reads as sickness, red light as danger, the dark ground as isolation. The headline states a medical fact in the form of an accusation.

The trouble is whom the picture accuses. A sexually transmitted disease passes between two people. The sheet draws one of them, a woman, and leaves the other out of the frame. The men who paid are nowhere on it. The archive's own description makes the same point: the cause is placed on the woman alone.

A health agency had a real job here, and warning people about syphilis and gonorrhea was part of it. A warning that names one party and spares the other is not neutral information, though. It teaches the public whom to blame. When the state speaks about private conduct, it owes the reader the whole of the facts, and a picture of one person is not the whole.

The same agency appears on this site in a different role, recruiting for the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps in Enlist in a Proud Profession (1943). The Roosevelt administration essay sorts the period's posters by what they asked of the public.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Prostitution spreads syphilis and gonorrhea, 1944. Federal Security Agency, U.S. Public Health Service (artist 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-1587, NAID 515252, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/prostitution-spreads-syphilis-and-gonorrhea-1944/