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It is during the First World War that the French Public Health Service started to worry about venereal diseases. The French nation was not only fighting against a threatening outside enemy, but also against an inside one which might wipe out the qualities of the French breed and lead the country to a greater defeat. From 1916 on, both civilian and military authorities took an emergency action to try to eradicate venereal diseases: these measures were at the same time constraining (the mobilized troops were regularly subjected to a medical examination, and forced to receive a treatment in case of a venereal disease) and based upon individual responsibility (hence the creation of open dispensaries). Once the war was over, all these measures which had been adopted in emergency were not cancelled but perpetuated. "