The idea of infection began to be taken far more seriously than it ever had before. Hospitals transformed themselves in response to the new plague - sometimes for the better, but often for the worse, as when, in fear, they cast their ulcerated patients out into the streets.

In 2007 Allen donated his collection of safe sex pamphlets to the Fales Library at NYU. Peter Lewis Allen (born 1957) is a scholar author and educator. He worked at McKinsey & Company in New York from 2000 to 2007 when he moved to San Francisco to become the Director of Google University (Google Inc.