Such examples of these painful treatments were thought to release whatever was causing syphilis. However, these treatments proved unsuccessful. Scientists were able to classify the spirochete Treponema pallidum in the early 1900s. In 1909, Paul Ehrlich found the first actual treatment against syphilis with his development of salvarsan. In 1943, penicillin was proven effective immunity, and its occurrence since has declined.
Manual protection includes using condoms.
Other treatments are still in progress. To read the results of one such research, see The Troubling Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study . Syphilis still exists today, particularly in the Americas and Europe, because it is difficult to keep track of the people affected with it. Many people may go and seek a doctor's treatment, but there is another group of people that fail to acknowledge they have this disease, and may unknowingly spread it to unsuspecting victims. Since the early 1900s, syphilis, has raised the death rate, lessened healthy births and weakened the population stature.