Medical Self-Care

Image Gallery PHOTOS BY RICHARD ALLEN

The facts behind the herpes scare

In 1976, Tom Ferguson — then a fourth-year medical student at Yale — launched a magazine called Medical SelfCare ... which — he hoped — would serve as "a Whole Earth Catalog of the best medical books, tools, and resources".

Tom spoke of his plans for the publication—and of his conviction that self-care could raise the general level of health in this country and lower our inflated levels of medical spending—in the Plowboy Interview in MOTHER NO. 51 ... and left no doubt that he would work toward making those "dreams" come true.

Well, Tom Ferguson is Doctor Fer. guson now, and the medical self-care "movement"—as well as Tom's magazine—has flourished. People are beginning to assume more responsibility for their own wellbeing arid are eager for information that will help them take better care of their bodies.

So—in an effort to provide just such very necessary data—THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS ® offers as a regular feature a piece by Tom Ferguson, M.D., entitled (what else?) "Medical Self Care".

Genital herpes, the topic of Dr. Ferguson's column this month, isn't the sort of subject that we usually cover in THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS ® However, since there has been a good bit of seemingly misleading information about this illness in the media lately—and because so much of that information has been of a "scare story" nature—we felt that our readers deserved an opportunity to read what we feet is a matter-of-fact discussion of the "new" disease that has affected the lives of a great many North Americans.

AN EPIDEMIC OF IGNORANCE

It's estimated that some 20 million Americans now have sexually transmit. fed herpes ... a disease that's been called "the heartbreaker", largely as a result of the fact that health workers often (incorrectly!) say that it is incurable. The fact is, however, that the body itself can cure this infection, and that people who help their bodies deal with it suffer less frequent and less severe attacks.

Herpes is caused by either of two closely related viruses: the herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2). Both the HSV's are "contact viruses": that is, they're spread from person to person by direct skin-to-skin contact... usually kissing (in the case of the familiar oral, or labial, herpes that's usually called a cold sore) or sexual contact (in the case of genital herpes). In fact, the only difference between cold sores and genital herpes is in the location of the infection!

Genital herpes sores are painful reddish blisters that erupt on the penis, on the vaginal lips, or inside the vagina. They last from one to several weeks, then disappear.