When I was much younger, one of the threats was veneral disease, often abbreviated as VD. In service station bathrooms, you could buy a condom from a machine for a quarter, with a sign warning "for prevention of VD only."
I haven't heard of VD in years. Is it a thing of the past? What I hear now is STD or STI. Is that the new terminology. If so, when did it change?
I haven't heard of VD in years. Is it a thing of the past? What I hear now is STD or STI. Is that the new terminology. If so, when did it change?
My understanding is that STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) and STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) are the current terminology. Looking at the Goggle Ngram viewer, they go back to the 1960s and very quickly replaced VD.
STD replaced VD since VD was generally used to mean syphilis and gonorrhea. It was changed in the late 60's to STD to include all the other diseases that were popping up, like HIV/AIDS, chlamydia, and genital herpes. Now they include HPV, and hepatitis B.
Unfortunately, while the older veneral diseases were easily 'cured' with standard antibiotics, the more recent ones are more resistant and thus more problematic, as HIV essentially never goes away, while chlamydia and genital herpes and difficult to prevent passing onto your partners. Condoms help, yet even those won't always protect others, as it's simple contact that matters, and often with herpes, it's also transmitted orally as well as by standard intercourse (thus the invention of Dental Dams).
Unfortunately, herpes can also be passed via non-sexual contact, thus from general kissing, including from mothers to sons or daughters, which get very interesting trying to explain.
I believe, that in the UK it was VD, then STD, then it was decided that the term 'disease' was too problematic, so it was shifted to 'infection'. Because that makes all the difference, apparently...
You can have asymptomatic infections without having a disease. Many people are infected with the varicella zoster virus; many of those people are not currently dealing with the chicken pox disease (which they had as children) or shingles (which they might get sometime later in life). The distinction between STDs and STIs leads to more precision, it's not just a "the vibes were bad" change.