NLM logo

Gallery: War and Politics

细菌战 (Public health and germ warfare during the Korean War), ca. 1952

细菌战 (Public health and germ warfare during the Korean War), author unknown, ca. 1952

In the early 1950s, during the Korean War there was a “patriotic public health movement” against germ warfare. In this poster, three men in masks holding shovels and spraying tools are burying a man who seems to be contagious with rats and flies. 


About the Book

Poster with a main image of bombs, flies, mosquitoes, rats and other pests attacking a running person, text below

These posters made in the early 1950s used the Korean War as a political backdrop to incentivize the public in their fight against diseases spread by pests such as flies and mosquitoes.