Category: Class Anxiety

• The Sulfonamide Sterility

  This theory held that the new sulfonamide drugs, celebrated in the 1930s as breakthrough anti-infective medicines, were not merely treatments but covert instruments of population control. In rumor form, the drugs were said to weaken fertility, damage reproductive capacity, or intentionally “neuter” laborers and the poor under the guise of modern medicine. The fear developed in the same period that sulfa drugs were becoming symbols of scientific authority, pharmaceutical manufacture, and state-backed public health. It also drew energy from real anxiety over side effects, the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster, and longstanding suspicion that medical innovations were being tested on ordinary people before elites would trust them themselves.