The Harrison Lecture, 1976. Sexually transmitted diseases (STD) as a medical specialty.

It is a very special honour to give the second Harrison Lecture; and personally gratifying, though somewhat awesome, to follow that skilled clinician, scholar, and friend-Ambrose King. Colonel L. W. Harrison stands tall in the history of the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), as he did in life. After his outstanding services to the Armed Forces of Great Britain in World War I, he returned to England to organize a civilian service that brought effective venereal disease treatment to those cases of infection most difficult to discover. In an era before the National Health Service, he made it possible for one group of patients to have ready access to good medical care under conditions of dignity and privacy. Ambrose King, in the first Harrison Lecture, has given a full and most interesting account of the venereal disease service in Great Britain as it evolved under Col. Harrison's leadership (King, 1974). About 1928 Col. Harrison travelled to North America, visitingTheJohns Hopkins University School of Medicine among many other medical centres, where I, as a young beginner in the field, met this impressive man who spoke persuasively of the things about which he felt so strongly. In retrospect, this trip had momentous consequences for he explained to knowledgeable listeners across the land the need to implement aggressive measures to bring persons with venereal disease under medical care where diagnosis could be made, treatment instituted, and spread of infection checked. I have been unable to document the direct personal influence that Col. Harrison had on Thomas Parran, who was chiefly responsible for lifting syphilis from the shadows in America (Parran, 1937). There is no doubt that Parran was extremely impressed with the venereal disease service of the British Ministry of Health and gained enormous moral support from Col. Harrison for his own pioneering efforts in the effective treatment of sexually transmitted diseases in America.