Still at the top of the sick list is Poster No. 3 of the American Social Hygiene Association, dated 1942 in the archive. A hospital ward photograph and a 1940–1944 graph that ends in a question mark sit over a paragraph on Army venereal disease rates (NAID 515490).
What the sheet prints
A long hospital ward of beds fills the photograph on this sheet, according to the archive, beside a line graph labeled for the years 1940 to 1944. The line falls and ends in a large question mark. A paragraph of text explains the graph.
STILL AT THE TOP
OF THE SICK LIST
WORLD WAR II
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944
?
Though the Army's venereal disease rate rose in 1940 and '41, this trend was checked in 1942 and the rate for World War II is now much lower than in World War I. But syphilis and gonorrhea are still among the chief causes of lost time in the Army. The same is true of the Navy.
[imprint: AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION
1790 BROADWAY, N. Y. CITY, N. Y. POSTER NO. 3]
Who made it
The imprint names the American Social Hygiene Association at 1790 Broadway, New York, and numbers the sheet Poster No. 3. The archive classes the issuer as a nongovernmental organization, not a federal office, and records the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as warning or informing. The National Archives holds it with the World War II posters in Record Group 44.
The archive dates the sheet 1942. The graph on it is labeled through 1944, and its text speaks of the trend being checked in 1942 as something already past. This page keeps the archive's date and notes that the sheet itself does not settle it.
How to read it
The archive tags fear appeal: the empty ward and the open question carry the warning. It also notes that the text itself says the rate is lower than in World War I. That is worth stressing. The poster's headline says the diseases are "still at the top," and its own paragraph says the rise was checked. Both can be true at once, and the sheet prints both.
That is careful practice. It gives a reader a trend, a comparison and a qualified claim, "among the chief causes of lost time," rather than a single frightening number. The question mark at the end of the graph is the appeal: what comes next depends on the reader.
A sharper approach appears in the 1943 government poster She May Look Clean, which names women as carriers rather than describing a rate. The Roosevelt administration essay sets these sheets beside the rest of the war's posters.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Still at the top of the sick list, 1942. American Social Hygiene Association (Poster No. 3).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1811, NAID 515490, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
