Establishment of the League of Nations brought its Health Organization into being, forerunner of today's WHO. For the first time the urgent job was begun of setting up international standards for biological products and tests, and an effort was made to bring order out of the growing confusion in treatment. At that time, every VD specialist had his own way of using the arsphenamines. The Health Organization arranged working laboratory conferences of experts in 1921, 1922, 1923, and again in 1928 and 1930. Its world wide study of the treatment of syphilis with arsenical drugs was reported in 1934. Its greatest accomplishment in the VD field was the international Brussels Agreement of 1924, providing treatment of VD for merchant seamen in the ports of all subscribing nations, of which there were 56 by 1938. The United States, steeped at the time in "isolationism," had not been one of them we were not a member of the League of Nations but we have cooperated since 1938. The Brussels Agreement was revised by the WHO in 1960, but more recently the rapid growth of sea traffic, especially in Asia and Africa, seems to have outdated it again.

Certain specialized organizations cooperated with the Health Organization to help apply the Brussels Agreement. In addition to the Office Internationale d'Hygiene Publique there was the International Labor Office, which received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1969, in its fiftieth year. There is also a nongovernmental group, the International Union Against the Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses (IUVDT), which grew up between the two world wars. Founded in 1923, the IUVDT was subscribed to by nineteen countries at first and had headquarters in Paris. It has continued to function, having been reorganized after World War II. By 1953 its member countries numbered thirty six. Its headquarters were moved to Rome, with regional offices elsewhere, including one for Europe in Copenhagen and one for the Americas in New York. This last is affiliated with the American Social Health Association, formerly the American Social Hygiene Association, which makes the problem of VD control its special province.