Reverby, Examining Tuskegee Part I

In Part I of Reverby's Examining Tuskegee, topic that struck me the most was how African American people with syphilis were handled. When syphilis began to have more of a presence in the 1920s, people would be treated with the use of mercury and other metals, which didn't actually help to treat the bacterial infection. Once people showed the first sign of syphilis, skin lesions, it was taken as primary and secondary syphilis (p. 25). And once the lesions healed, it was believed that the body's immune system was the best way to fight of the disease (p.26). Today, the best way to fight off the disease is to get treatment and not get to the stage of lesions healing. In Examining Tuskegee, patients in University Hospital in Oslo, Norway were hospitalized. Fifteen years later, some of the patients were followed up. Only 309 of the 2,000 patients were found, and 309 men and women were still alive, but 164 people had died. Out of the 309 still alive 40% were symptom free, but roughly half had presence of the disease in their blood. Another 18.1% had cardio or neurological problems (p. 26). To me this is evidence that some people who are untreated, can die or develop major problems later in life. Later on, penicillin (the cure for the disease) was discovered and was used on syphilitic people across the country (p. 63). However, there were some cases in which people would not be treated, such as on page 77 of Examining Tuskegee, and ended up having medical problems caused by syphilis. Overall, it is shown that not being treated for syphilis highly increases the possibility of medical problems or death.