Short answers, pulled from the story.
The scientific name of the bacterium that causes syphilis is Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. This spiral-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium moves with a corkscrew motion to burrow through tissues efficiently.
The first major outbreak recorded in history erupted in Naples, Italy, in 1495 during a French invasion. This epidemic spread rapidly among French troops, leading to the disease being called the French disease by the people of Naples.
The Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro named the condition syphilis by 1530. He borrowed the name from a character in his Latin poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus which described the ravages of the disease in Italy.
Primary syphilis begins with the appearance of a chancre, which is a single, firm, painless ulcer measuring between 1 centimeter and 2 centimeters in diameter. This sore typically appears between 10 and 90 days after exposure and heals on its own within three to six weeks.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service. This study enrolled 600 poor, African American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama, of whom 399 had contracted syphilis before the study began.
About 45.4 million people were infected with syphilis globally in 2015. This figure represents the significant morbidity and mortality caused by the disease in many parts of the world despite the availability of effective treatments.