Short answers, pulled from the story.
Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum is the spiral-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium responsible for syphilis. This organism has a small genome and relies entirely on its human host to survive.
Primary syphilis typically appears as a single chancre between one centimeter and two centimeters in diameter about two to six weeks after contact. Secondary syphilis follows four to ten weeks later with a diffuse rash involving the palms of hands and soles of feet.
Arsphenamine was the first effective treatment for syphilis discovered by Sahachiro Hata in 1909 under the trade name Salvarsan. Penicillin was confirmed effective in trials in 1943 and remains the preferred antibiotic today.
In 2015 about 45.4 million people had syphilis infections with six million new cases recorded globally. During that same year the disease caused approximately 107,000 deaths down from 202,000 in 1990.
A 2024 study published in Nature supported syphilis having first emerged among humans in the Americas during the mid-Holocene. Damaged teeth and bones found in medieval skeletal remains provide compelling evidence for pre-Columbian existence.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male ran from 1932 until 1972 involving 600 poor African American sharecroppers from Macon County Alabama. Researchers enrolled 399 men who had contracted syphilis before the study began while 201 did not have the disease.