Word: phthirus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Once the bane of streetwalkers and their patrons, Phthirus pubis, or the crab louse, is exhibiting upward mobility. As sexual barriers tumble, the tenacious parasites are infesting more and more middle-class youngsters. One reason, says Boston Dermatologist A. Bernard Ackerman in the New England Journal of Medicine, is that the bugs are making the scene at hippie love-ins. And it is only a short hop from the crash pad to the college crowd...
...invariably driven to a pharmacist or a doctor, no matter how embarrassing the visit may be. A simple cure, says Dermatologist Ackerman, is to apply a 1% solution of gamma-benzene hexachloride, either as a cream, lotion or shampoo, to the troubled area. Nevertheless, since the presence of Phthirus pubis is usually the result of sexual contact, he urges all physicians who come upon such scratching patients to examine them for gonorrhea and syphilis as well...
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