Syphilis

Syphilis is a venereal disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. It is most commonly spread through sexual activity, but may also be transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. 

There are four stages of syphilis: the primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages. In each stage, the signs and symptoms of syphilis are different. In the primary stage, a person usually just has a wound on their skin, called a "chancre." In the secondary stage, a person usually gets a rash. In the "latent" stage, which can last for years, there are few or no symptoms.  If syphilis reaches the tertiary stage, which is the most severe, it causes many serious symptoms. These can include problems with the nervous system and the heart. Eventually, many people with tertiary syphilis will die if they do not get medical treatment.

Reddish papules and nodules due to secondary syphilis. By Herbert L. Fred, MD, Hendrik A. van Dijk,

Syphilis was first recorded in Europe in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion (Italian War of 1494–98). It is believed the disease originated in the Americas and was brought to Italy by the returning crewmen from Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic. 

Syphilis was initially known as the "French disease" by the people of Naples, "Italian disease" by the French, "Spanish disease" by the Dutch, and "Christian Disease" by the Turks.

In the 1500s, Scotland called syphilis "Grandgore"—the only European country that didn't shift the blame by naming it after another nation.

An early medical illustration of people with syphilis, Vienna, 1498

In leading the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean and an Eastern Empire, Vasco da Gama also inadvertently spearheaded the spread of syphilis as far east as Japan.

The pastoral name "syphilis" (the name of a character) was first used by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro as the title of his Latin poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus ("Syphilis or The French Disease"). It told of a shepherd boy named Syphilus who insulted Greek god Apollo and was punished by that god with a horrible disease. In this poem Fracastoro advanced the innovative theory that syphilis is spread by "seeds" sown by human contact.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, syphilis was one of the largest public health burdens in terms of prevalence, symptoms, and disability. 

The picture below is a portrait of Gerard de Lairesse by Rembrandt van Rijn, circa 1665–67. De Lairesse, himself a painter and art theorist, had congenital syphilis that deformed his face and eventually blinded him. 

The wigs that English judicial officials wear today were invented in the 16th century —to cover the baldness of syphilis.

Since smallpox and syphilis lesions look similar, many American Civil War soldiers got syphilis attempting to vaccinate themselves against smallpox.

In 1885 Arthur Conan Doyle was awarded a doctorate from Edinburgh for his dissertation on syphilis.

The causative organism of syphallis, Treponema pallidum, was first identified by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann in 1905.

Electron micrograph of Treponema pallidum on cultures of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells 

The first effective treatment for syphilis was Salvarsan (meaning "that which saves by arsenic"), developed in 1910 by Paul Ehrlich. For four years he and his assistants had tried hundreds of compounds with molecules not unlike dyes but containing arsenic, as a part of his program to find a "magic bullet" that could locate and destroy the disease microbes in the body with only minor damage to the patient. The six hundred and sixth one they tried was found to be effective against the Treponema pallidum bacterium.

Malaria was once used to treat syphilis.  Between 1917 and the mid 1940s,Viennese neurologist Dr. Wagner von Jauregg injected sufferers with malaria-infected blood, causing an extremely high fever that ultimately killed the disease. Jauregg won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927 for the treatment. It remained in use until penicillin came along and gave doctors a better, safer way to cure the STD.

The effectiveness of the treatment of syphilis with penicillin was confirmed in trials in 1943. Before the discovery and use of Salvarsan and then antibiotics, mercury was often used with the result that the patient was often killed by the treatment. 

Syphilis became much less common after penicillin became available in the 1940s. In 1999 it is believed to have infected 12 million additional people, with greater than 90% of cases in the developing world. However, since 2000, Since 2000, rates of syphilis have been increasing in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe, primarily among men who have sex with other males.

In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eradicate mother to child transmission of syphilis.