The WPA & the Golden Age · The Public Good
The great crippler - syphilis
Works Progress Administration, produced for the Town of Hempstead Health Department, 1937
What it is
A 1937 silkscreen public-health poster titled "The great crippler - syphilis," made by an anonymous Works Progress Administration workshop for the Town of Hempstead Health Department on Long Island.
Why it matters
It belongs to the federal anti-venereal-disease campaign that ran under Surgeon General Thomas Parran in the late 1930s, a push to drag syphilis out of the language of shame and into the language of medicine. The whole argument sits in the headline: not sin, not scandal, but crippling - a public health department addressing ordinary people as patients to be treated rather than sinners to be judged.
What to notice
The headline does the persuading almost alone, and because this is an unrestored scan from the Library of Congress original, the sheet still carries the paper's real wear rather than a cleaned-up surface.
A word chosen to make people act instead of hide.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- Works Progress Administration, produced for the Town of Hempstead Health Department, 1937
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · POS - WPA - NY .D03, no. 2 (B size) [P&P]
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
