I was watching this old black and white training film about preventing STD’s for US Navy sailors made in 1942 who would visit brothels and sleep with STD infected prostitutes. Seeing as this was before penicillin and many of them did not want to use condoms, prevention was key. The short film can be seen here - YouTube (skip to 3:59) Basically it said that if you took a shower, urinated and washed your genitals right after sex and then applied a antiseptic cream to your penis, your chances of catching a STD were very low. They even had a chart and for every hour you waited to do this your chance of getting a STD would increase. This led me to wonder if applying a broad spectrum yet gentle antiseptic such as betadine (povidone-iodine) which is used in hospitals and is available over the counter at any pharmacy to prevent wound infection, would prevent catching genital herpes if used right after sex. You would let it sit on the skin for the recommended time which varies between one minute and 15 minutes depending on what you read and then wash it off to prevent drying out or irritating the skin. I personally use betadine any time I get a cut and have never gotten a infection, I also use it if I get a boil or staph infection and it gets better 24 hours. I think I should be clear I am talking about regular betadine and not betadine surgical scrub which contains detergents and is designed to be immediately rinsed off. Think about it if you cut your hand and put betadine on it, it prevents infection. You put betadine on your penis afterwards it prevents herpes infection, and your penis does not even have any cuts so transmission is less likely anyway. It makes logical sense. Betadine is safe for use on the penis and is applied before inserting a catheter to prevent urinary tract infections. Condoms do not necessarily prevent herpes so I think it’s worth discussing whether you think it would work. Unfortunately there has not been much research on this kind of thing since the release of penicillin in 1945 cured the most serious STD’s of the time. And becasue betadine is cheap and available as a generic, there is not funding to do a formal study on whether it would work as big pharma would rather people catch herpes and then have to take tons on expensive oral drugs to get rid of it and then have it come back and take them again and again. The only real research I could find on preventing STD’s was this US navy film and a book written by a urologist in the 1920’s who said urinating immediately after sex will reduce your change of getting gonorrhea by 98%. Back then they used to treat gonorrhea by injecting antiseptic silver solution’s into the urethra with a blunt tip syringe. Interesting book.
Didn’t you get enough answers in your previous thread?
And the “interesting book” you mentioned was, as you said, written about ninety years ago. There have been one or two advancements since then in disease prevention and treatment.
Closing this since you have a thread about it here, alread (as also noted above).