[Narrator:] South of Savannah, the waves of the Atlantic break on the shores
of the golden isles of Georgia.
Once the rendezvous of buccaneers, later scene of rich manorial plantations,
these islands have character and charm.
Witness the picturesque ruins of the old slave hospital
where Negro slaves were treated more than a century ago.
Westward the marshes of Glynn and the Sidney Lanier oak under which the poet sat while
he wrote the songs that have made these marshes famous.
On the main, its harbor sheltered by the sea island is the old town of Brunswick,
county seat of Glynn County, rich in traditions, important port of the old south,
thriving seafood and industrial center of the new.
Here are important crab and shrimp fisheries, canneries to preserve the catch for shipment.
One of the South's largest wood pulp mills,
a modern plant for distillation of pine oil and other wood by-products...
a thriving veneer and box industry, all together giving employment
to thousands of workmen.
Brunswick, center of a rural area, is typical of communities throughout America.
Here a demonstration in syphilis control can be carried on,
a test program for work at other places, south or north.
The United States Public Health Service joined with the health departments of Georgia and
Glynn County to set up such a project. This is not the story of syphilis, the disease;
it is the story of public health organizations who stamp out syphilis.
In Brunswick, the work resembles that of any city. Private doctors are given free drugs
to treat all their cases of syphilis, so that those who can afford to pay but little
may go to their own doctors.
Thus the private physician treats those who can't afford to pay at all.
At the health department, a modern public clinic treats 275 patients each week free of charge.
Systematic efforts have been made to find syphilis, bring it to treatment.
Blood tests are a part of school health examination. Every child here has already been tested.
In small communities in the outlying region the story is the same.
Here at St. Simon's, 35 patients come to the clinic each week.
And rural doctors receive free drugs and financial
aid for the treatment of poorer patients, just as do the doctors of the town.
Up beyond the towns, beyond the doctors' offices, beyond even roads, are the woods.
This is a rural land, a land of forests, fewer than ten people to the square mile,
deep in the piney woods. How would one reach these people?
How reach those who work at country saw mills, who gather gum from the pine trees and tend
the turpentine stills? Here are people who have neither means for travel to urban centers,
nor leisure to travel.
The health officer must reach these too if he is to meet his responsibility for the protection
of the community. If this mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.
Hence, a mobile clinic that travels throughout three counties, Camden, McIntosh and Glynn.
Let's follow its journeys day by day.
Monday 107 miles, 106 patients.
Tuesday 110 miles, 129 patients.
Wednesday 102 miles, 118 patients.
Thursday 40 miles, 40 patients.
Friday 100 miles, 90 patients.
Saturday 60 miles, 44 patients.
For the week: 519 miles, 527 patients at 24 clinics.
This silver top is the symbol of the service. Along the road, the clinic itself becomes
a bus to bring patients who live at intermediate points to the treatment center.
The clinic stops, the patients gather.
Next to church, the biggest event of the week.
Find syphilis, bring it to treatment,
that is the story of control.
The treatment renders the patient non-infectious, stops the spread of the disease through the community.
It's a far cry from the swift and shining trailer to the oxcart, but many come to the
clinic in this way, while many more come on foot,
some walking ten miles or more for treatment once a week for 70 weeks.
They gather at that rural forum, the country store,
to compare notes on this new contribution to the life of the community.
The school bus serves in a new capacity. It brings more patients to the clinic.
Doctors on wheels, the clinical methods of the finest hospitals reach out to serve a rural life.
Inside the trailer is a completely equipped clinic. Electric sterilizers, refrigerator,
fans, and lights are fed by a 110-volt generator in the tow car.
No time is wasted in setting up for work.
Three minutes after arrival treatment can begin.
The clinic serves as a health center not only for syphilis. This boy is being immunized
against typhoid fever. At crowded stops the county nurse sets up her stand nearby.
In the forward part of the trailer, blood is taken for laboratory tests.
Arsphenamine is administered.
Two patients may be treated at once.
Here a specimen of blood is taken for a test.
Arsphenamine injected into the blood kills the germ of syphilis,
and the patient can no longer transmit the disease to others.
Each patient gets simply written detailed instructions so that the illness will be fully understood.
Behind the curtain in the rear of the trailer is a complete examination room
with its own equipment and sterilizer. Here bismuth is administered.
Bismuth prevents the tragic relapses of heart and brain.
At health department headquarters in Brunswick, darkfield examinations are performed.
A little serum from the first sore is examined under the microscope.
This is the earliest possible diagnosis for syphilis.
The earlier treatment is begun, the surer the cure.
It would take thirty-five hundred of these syphilis germs laid end to end to make an inch.
Spirochaeta pallida, a killer at large.
At Waycross, sixty miles from Brunswick, Georgia has a modern branch laboratory.
Here blood tests are performed for the Tri-County project.
Tubes filled with blood specimens come from the trailer,
from the Brunswick clinic, and from private physicians.
An automatic pipette measures serum into test tubes for the Kahn test.
Trained laboratory technicians are essential.
Laboratories can't afford to make mistakes. Let's see the result.
Negative, no syphilis. Negative, no syphilis.
Positive reaction.
Note the heavy particles in the tube -- that means syphilis.
But one must be very sure. Let us doublecheck with a Wassermann test.
That is another blood test for syphilis, technically a little different from the Kahn. Let's see what it will show.
A milky fluid like this in the tube on the right would mean syphilis.
The clear tube is a check tube and here are the tests.
Watch the tube on the right: negative, no syphilis. Negative, no syphilis.
Positive. Here our case of syphilis is verified.
Even the layman can see the difference in these two tubes.
The project is organized for finding cases and holding them in treatment.
It takes 70 weeks to ensure a cure for syphilis.
Even with free treatment, it is not always easy to keep patients coming week after week.
The trailer helps, but there are four follow- up workers, two white and two colored.
The house-to-house canvass has proved also a most effective means of getting blood specimen.
Behind the project, too, is education. One must carry this story to the people.
Midwives deliver 400 babies a year in these counties. Well- trained by the health department,
they are licensed by the state.
Here they learn about the blood tests and actual demonstration.
They carry forth the story and bring mothers in for prenatal blood tests.
The grocery man wraps up the clinic announcement with every purchase.
The country store shares a place among its tobacco signs for clinic hand bills.
Wherever the workers go, they tell the story of the clinic to willing ears.
How bad blood makes people sick, how it destroys heart and brain, how it makes babies die,
how the blood test finds it, and how the treatment, if taken long enough, is certain cure.
The blood test serves a double purpose. First, it is a dragnet for syphilis.
Second, it is an educational device. Blood specimens are taken in the turpentine woods,
at factory gates, on the shrimp wharves, at the docks of the [inaudible] fisherman.
A man who has seen the blood test loses his fear. The man who hasn't had one wants it.
Everyone talks about it; the blood test becomes a demonstration and a symbol.
Youth faces its problem more directly, honestly, spontaneously then did its father.
Here, the blood test carries its message to a country dance hall.
But the greatest help comes from the churches, Pastors are ever willing and glad to cooperate.
They urge their people to join in the program.
They tell them of a disease which threatens health and life and the generation yet unborn.
They urge that the message will be carried forth to the countryside,
that all may know and walk in the light of health.
They themselves take the blood test as a demonstration and urge their parishioners to follow them.
Such is the story of a community mobilized, a community which met syphilis with the weapons
of medicine and modern public health. Whatever you may do in your community, in these three
counties of southeastern Georgia, the days of syphilis are numbered.
Syphilis will be the next great plague to go.
[Gospel choir sings Walking in the Light of God]
[Image of the clinic bus traveling down the road...
and people walking through the woods and along paths and roads,
or traveling in an ox-drawn cart.]
[Gospel singing continues, with images of people traveling toward town, and the clinic bus doing the same.]
[Eventually all gather at the mobile clinic in town, awaiting evaluations and treatment.]
[Their work complete, the health care workers and the clinic bus drive away from town.]