Venereal Diseases Act

The Venereal Disease Act of 1917 and The Cancer Act of 1939 had already prevented public advertisement and promotion of drugs for these conditions to protect sufferers from inadequate or unsuitable treatment and fraudulent claims (of efficacy). 

Still, little attention was paid to the efficacy of drugs and treatment. The Venereal Disease Act of 1917 and the Cancer Act of 1939 prevented the public advertisement and promotion of drugs for these conditions, to prevent sufferers from inadequate or unsuitable treatment and from fraudulent claims. It was necessary to wait until the Medicines Act was in force before further consideration was given to efficacy (but see Therapeutic Substances Act), but it maybe noted here that this was a foretaste of control of advertisement and promotional literature for medicines. 

Boerhaave s prescription of mercury in venereal diseases depends upon the principle that remedies have to work in accordance with the motions of the body. For example infusions and decoctions only work when the vital motion of the living body mixes them with the bodily humours and transports them to the parts of the body where they are supposed to act their own peculiar force. Mercury, likewise, only works on account of the vital force moving the solid and fluid parts. This means that it cannot do any good when the disorder is seated in a part where the force of the heart and arteries cannot be felt. So, for example mercury is of no use when the marrow of bones is affected or when a gonorrhoea is situated in the cavities of the penis, where the humours have a very weak impetus. On the other hand ... 

Patients with infectious venereal diseases are also more dangerous to others, and are more demonstrably so, than are mental patients. Nevertheless, physicians have no powers to confine them, let alone forcibly treat them. Such persons are free to infect anyone willing to engage in a sexual act with them and, according to the most up-to-date medical-ethical opinion, Access to treatment for [women with] infertility should no longer be contingent on HIV status.This despite the fact that the HIV virus is transmitted from the mother to the fetus. 

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