ABSTRACT
The transmission of sexually transmitted infections among homosexually active men would not regularly command headlines in England and North America until the emergence of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in the early 1980s. Yet this topic had, by then, been a developing social and public health concern for over 30 years; it remains a pressing issue today, over 30 years later. This chapter aims to sketch the contours of this pre-AIDS history, one which has languished in the shadow of HIV and has received relatively little attention from historians. 1
