Public Health in the Era of South Africa's Syphilis Epidemic of the 1930s and 1940s

References

• Parnell , S. 1993 . Journal of Southern African Studies , 19 : 471 – 88 . This Synopsis draws on, Creating Racial Privilege: The Origins of South African Town Planning and Public Health Legislation', (A. Jeeves and J. Crash, eds, White Farms, Black Labor: The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, 1910–50 (Portsmouth and Pietermaritzburg, 1997), 114–36, 147–71
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• 1930 . Dr. G.A. Park Ross, Senior Assistant Health Officer, Durban. Central Archives Depot (hereafter CAD), Pretoria, Government Native Labour Bureau Archive, 388 33/64 Park Ross to Secretary for Public Health (SPH), 20 Dec.
   Google Scholar
• Torr , L. 1930–1960 . The People's City: African Life in Twentieth Century Durban Edited by: Maylam , P. and Edwards , I. 246 – 7 . Pietermaritzburg ‘Lamontville: A History,’, in, eds, (1996
   Google Scholar
• Sidney and Kark , Emily . 1999 . Promoting Community Health: From Pholela to Jerusalem Johannesburg (S. Marks, ‘South Africa's Early Experiment in Social Medicine, Its Pioneers and Politics', American Journal of Public Health, 87 (1997), 452–9;D. Harrison, ‘The National Health Services Commission, 1942–4: Its Origins and Outcome’, South African Medical Journal, 83 (1993), 679–84;H.T. Phillips, “The 1945 Gluckman Report and the Establishment of South Africa's Health Centres', American Journal of Public Health, 83 (1993), 1037–9;M. Susser, ‘A South African Odyssey in Community Health: A Memoire of the Impact of the Teachings of Sidney Kark’, in ibid., 1039–42;D. Yach and S.M. Tollman, ‘Public Health Initiatives in South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s: Lessons for a Post-Apartheid Era’, in ibid., 1043–50;S.M. Tollman, ‘Community Oriented Primary Care: Origins, Evolution, Applications’, Social Science and Medicine, 32 (1991), 633–42;S. Marks and N. Andersson, ‘Industrialisation, Rural Health and the 1944 National Health Services Commission in South Africa’, in S. Feierman and J. Janzen, eds, The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 131–61
   Google Scholar
• 2001 . The Color of Disease: Syphilis and Racism in South Africa, 1910–1950 Houndmills On the history of syphilis in South Africa, see K.J. Jochelson. (and K.J. Jochelson, ‘Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century South Africa’, in P. Setel et al., eds, Histories of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDs in Sub-Saharan Africa (Westport, 1999), 217–43
   Google Scholar
• Nelson , N. A. and Cain , G. O. 1938 . Syphilis, Gonorrhea and the Public Health 51 – 71 . New York
   Google Scholar
• 1943 . Council of Public Health (hereafter CPH), Minutes of the 24th Meeting, 12–13 Jan. CAD, Department of Public Health Archive (hereafter, GES) 1980 34/33G
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . ‘Treatment in hospital of tertiary cases and the majority of congenital syphilitics … cannot be accepted as a Charge on public funds’, GES 1347 250/19, DPH circular to medical missions, 8 Sep.
   Google Scholar
• Callahan , B. 1997 . Journal of Southern African Studies , 23 : 421 – 40 . For the yaws factor, see, ‘“Veni, VD, Vici”? Reassessing the Ila Syphilis Epidemic’, (J. McCulloch, Black Peru, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–35 (Bloomington, 2000), 149–50;J. McCulloch, ‘The Management of Venereal Disease in a Settler Society: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–30’, in Sitel, Histories of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 195–216;M. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford, Ca., 1991)
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Setel , Jochelson in . Histories of Sexually Transmitted Disease 221
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . 3720 South Africa, House of Assembly, Parliamentary Debates (hereafter Hansard), 34
   Google Scholar
• Kark , S. L. 1962 . A Practice of Social Medicine: A South African Team's Experiences in Different African Communities Edited by: Kark , S. L. and Steuart , G. W. 195 – 209 . Edinburgh ‘Migrant Labour and Family Health’, in, eds, (201
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . 3711 – 23 . For example, Hansard, 34 (C. Bain-Marais (Orange Grove), introducing a motion calling for appointment of a government commission on the prevalence of STDs and the ensuing debate reported in that volume
   Google Scholar
• See the correspondence in GES 376
   Google Scholar
• McCulloch . Black Peru, White Virtue 163–66;Vaughan, Curing Their Ills
   Google Scholar
• Dubow , S. 1995 . Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa 181 – 9 . Cambridge
   Google Scholar
• 1940 . Rand Daily Mail, 6 May, clipping in GES 2702 1/62. In 1943, the SPH observed that governments had constructed 50 000 housing units in the twenty years up to 1942. GES 1098 401/17J SPH memorandum, 23 Sep. 1943
   Google Scholar
• Annual Report of the Department of Public Health (hereafter ARDPH), Year Ended 30 June 1937. (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1937, UG 52—'37), 20
   Google Scholar
• 1979 . GES 34/33F CPH, Minutes of the 18th meeting, 9–10 Feb. 1938
   Google Scholar
• 1902 . GES 11/32E Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Vital Statistics of the Non-European Population, 1937
   Google Scholar
• Central Mining and Investment Corporation/Rand Mines, Limited
   Google Scholar
• Orenstein , A. J. 1922 . Medical Journal of South Africa , 18 : 192 – 7 . ‘South African Medical Congress,’, (1923, offprint in GES 1005 19/17A
   Google Scholar
• Ibid.
   Google Scholar
• 1937 . ARDPH, Year Ended 30 June 1937 Pretoria, Government Printer (UG 52–'37), 15
   Google Scholar
• 1980 . GES 34/33G Minutes of the 17th meeting of the CPH, 15 Jan. 1937
   Google Scholar
• 1979 . GES 34/33F, Minutes of the 18th meeting of the CPH, 1938
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . GES 1095 401/17L, Notes of meeting, 23 Jan.
   Google Scholar
• GES 376 contains much of the relevant correspondence
   Google Scholar
• Swanson , M. W. 1900–1909 . Journal of African History , 18 : 387 – 410 . Yet another case of the ‘sanitation syndrome’ in action., ‘“The Sanitation Syndrome”: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony,’, (1977
   Google Scholar
• 1937 . GES 375 415A, The Medical Examination of Male Natives at the Pass Offices on the Witwatersrand, [] report of inspection by H.S. Gear
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . GES 376 4/5B SPH to Secretary of Native Affairs, 25 Jan.
   Google Scholar
• Ibid. It did later encourage employers and householders to have their workers and servants medically examined before employing them
   Google Scholar
• 1951 . GES 376 4/5C, Gale to the Minister, 9 Oct. Finding it necessary to educate the National Party's Minister of Health on the subject, Gale used the same standard arguments that the department had been putting out since the 1930s
   Google Scholar
• Setel , Jochelson in . Histories of Sexually Transmitted Disease 229–30
   Google Scholar
• Packard , R. M. 1989 . White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa 234 – 48 . Berkeley (For a discussion of the structural factors involved in STD pandemics see M.L. Lewis et al., eds, Sex, Disease and Society: A Comparative History of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (Westport, 1997), 1–17
   Google Scholar
• Packard . White Plague, 235
   Google Scholar
• Ibid., 236–7
   Google Scholar
• Dormer , B. A. and Dormer , B. A. 1950 . South African Medical Journal , 29 : 618 – 622 . As late as, ‘Procedures in the Control of Tuberculosis: The Practical Approach: 4, Diagnosis and Treatment’, (1950, also in GES 2912 PI10 (5)
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . That was the view of an ‘expert committee’ convened by the department early in to prepare for the DPH's planned TB Conference scheduled for later in the year. The committee called urgently for ‘… further research into the epidemiological phenomena, especially in respect of pathogenesis, resistance, both racial and individual, tuberculin allergy, nutrition and environment’. GES 1095 401/17L, Notes of meeting, 23 Jan. 1939
   Google Scholar
• Edward Thornton , Sir , Cluver , E. H. , Allan , Peter and Gale , George . 1932–51 .
   Google Scholar
• 1933 . GES 1094 401/17B, E.N. Thornton to Minister of Public Health (MPH), 5 Dec.
   Google Scholar
• ARDPH, Year Ended 30 June 2009 (Pretoria, Government Printer 1934, UG40–'34), 80–1
   Google Scholar
• 1940 . Rand Daily Mail, 6 May, clipping in GES 2702 1/62. In 1943, the SPH observed that governments had constructed 50 000 housing units in the twenty years up to 1942. GES 1098 401/17J SPH memorandum, 23 Sep. 1943
   Google Scholar
• 1937 . GES 1347 250/19, E.H. Cluver to C.H. Malcomess, 27 July
   Google Scholar
• 1939 . ARDPH, Year Ended 30 June 1938 Pretoria, Government Printer (UG 49–'38), 17
   Google Scholar
• GES 1095 401/17L, Notes of Meeting, 23/1/39
   Google Scholar
• Hansard 37, 2299–2300
   Google Scholar
• Cluver had resigned to assume the directorship of the South African Institute of Medical Research
   Google Scholar
• 1980 . GES 34/33G, Minutes of the Meeting of the CPH, 27–28 Feb. 1941
   Google Scholar
• 1934 . GES 1094 401/17B, Thornton to MPH, 5 Jan.
   Google Scholar
• 1946 . ARDPH. 30 June (Pretoria, Government Printer, n.d., U.G. 18–'47), 1–2
   Google Scholar
• 1947 . GES 1099 401/17M, Department of Health Document on TB control
   Google Scholar
• Transcripts of six ‘health specials’ published by the Natal Mercury, Rand Daily Mail, Cape Times, The Friend (Bloemfontein) and the East London Daily Dispatch, GES 2263 60/38D
   Google Scholar
• Ibid.
   Google Scholar
• As quoted in the article
   Google Scholar
• 1938 . GES 2264 60/38 E.H. Cluver, SPH, to MPH, 16 Nov.
   Google Scholar
• 1947 . GES 2264, passim in this volume. On the reception of one of these films by African audiences, see W.V. Brelsford, ‘Analysis of African Reaction to Propaganda Film’, NADA: The Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs Department Annual, (Salisbury, 1946), 7–22;and M. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford, Ca., 1991), ch. 5
   Google Scholar
• GES 2264 60/38 ‘Scenario’ for ‘Two Brothers’ by Joseph Albrecht, African Film Productions
   Google Scholar
• Cain , Nelson and . Syphilis, Gonorrhea and the Public Health
   Google Scholar
• Foucault , M. 1973 . The Birth of the Clinic London (Discipline and Punish (London, 1977);History of Sexuality (London, 1981);also, A. Butchart, The Anatomy of Power: European Constructions of the African Body (Pretoria, 1998)
   Google Scholar
• GES 2264
   Google Scholar
• 1999 . GES 65/33 “Native Economic Commissions,” Evidence Given to the Native Economic Commission by G.A. Park Ross, Assistant Health Officer, Union in Durban, 1 April 1931
   Google Scholar
• On the campaigns against malaria in Zululand, see CAD, Native Affairs Department Archive (NTS) 2067 138/280 and GES 2625 6/56;Alan Jeeves, ‘Migrant Workers and Epidemic Malaria on the South African Sugar Estates, 1906–48’, in Jeeves and Crush, eds, White Farms, Black Labor, 114–36
   Google Scholar
• 1999 . GES 65/33 Native Economic Commissions' Park Ross's evidence
   Google Scholar
• 1940 . Rand Daily Mail, 6 May, clipping in GES 2702 1/62
   Google Scholar
• 2000 . South African Historical Journal , 43 : 244 – 66 . See the works listed in n. 4 and AH. Jeeves, ‘Health, Surveillance and Community: South Africa's Experiment with Medical Reform in the 1940s and 1950s’
   Google Scholar
• 1946 . The Department of Health set up the Institute in to train staff and conduct applied research in support of its new health centre service, which was to deliver health care to poor communities on the model of the Pholela clinic. Sidney Kark was the IFCH's first director
   Google Scholar
• 1883 . GES 1/32, O, DPH Annual Report, draft for the year ended 30 June 1944
   Google Scholar
• 1917 . GES 46/32 Polela Health Unit, Annual Report for the Year Ended 30 June 1945
   Google Scholar
• Steuart , Kark and . A Practice of Social Medicine 19–23
   Google Scholar
• 1997 . Report of a Who Study Group, Improving the Performance of Health Centres in District Health Systems , Who Technical Reports Series Geneva, World Health Organization (869
   Google Scholar
• Health Systems Trust . 2000 . South African Health Review, (Durban, 2001), ch. 1
   Google Scholar
• GES 2958 PN6, 1, ‘Comments upon the Training Scheme for Health Personnel: Durban’ by HS. Gear, confidential
   Google Scholar
• 1945 . In line with the department's new emphasis on health promotion, it changed its name in
   Google Scholar
• Ryle , John A. 1948 . ‘A Report on the Health Centres Service of the Union Department of Health’, GES 2958 PN6(1) []
   Google Scholar
• 1997 . Improving the Performance of Health Centres in District Health Systems 44 Geneva, World Health Organization
   Google Scholar
• Butchart . Anatomy of Power 146–50
   Google Scholar
• 1941 . ARDPH, Year Ended 30 June 1940 Pretoria, Government Printer (U.G. 8–'41),63;and ibid., Year Ended 30 June 1941 (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1941, U.G.46–'41), 58
   Google Scholar
• 1950 . GES 2900 PH42,3. ‘Institute of Family and Community Health, Report of the Medical Officer-in-Charge, to 30 June’
   Google Scholar
• Kark . ‘Migrant Labour and Family Health’, 194–209
   Google Scholar
• 1889 . GES 2/32H Report of the Pholela health unit for the period ending 30 June 1942
   Google Scholar
• 1949 . South African Medical Journal , 23 Reported by Kark in the
   Google Scholar
• Kark . ‘Migrant Labour and Family Health’, 200–1
   Google Scholar
• Wylie , D. 2001 . Starving on a Full Stomach Charlottesville
   Google Scholar
• Kark . ‘Migrant Labour and Family Health’, 208
   Google Scholar
• 1942 . Annual Report of the Department of Health, for the Year Ended 30 June 1947 Pretoria, Government Printer Among the families in the intensive service, the death rate fell from 38.33/1000 in to 13.11 in 1946 and infant mortality from 275/1000 to 155. (1949, U.G. 58–'48), 19
   Google Scholar
• 1948 . In, the service's budget was less than two per cent of Pretoria's spending on health. Medical officers' salaries were very low and prospects for professional development limited. Most of the buildings and facilities were substandard and the medical equipment rudimentary. GES 2727 1/70D, Report on Tour of Inspection by David Landau, Chief of the Division of Social Medicine at the IFCH, 20 May 1947;GES 2752 105/70, minutes of the Advisory Committee on Health Centre Practice, 18 Aug. 1948
   Google Scholar
• David Landau's report cited in ibid.
   Google Scholar
• Tollman . ‘Community Oriented Primary Care’
   Google Scholar
• For example, Chapter 15 in A Practice of Social Medicine
   Google Scholar
• 1948 . For a recent assessment of the difficulties that the service was experiencing even before, see Marks, ‘South Africa's Early Experiment’
   Google Scholar
• 1997 . ‘White Paper for the Transformation of the Health System in South Africa’, Government Gazette, Vol. 382
   Google Scholar
• 1944 . Smuts and the cabinet rejected key recommendations of the commission, some of them before the report was published. GES 2367 National Health Services Scheme [Vol 1] DPH, 22 Aug., ‘Commentary on Report of National Health Services Commission and Discussion of Alternative Scheme’
   Google Scholar