In recent months, newspapers around the country have published stories that sound like they could have been written 100 years ago. Indiana’s syphilis cases skyrocketed by 70 percent in a single year. Texas’ Lubbock county was under a “syphilis alert.” Various counties face shortages of the medication used to treat syphilitic pregnant women. But the headlines are very much modern—and urgent.

Syphilis is back, public-health experts say. For many years, syphilis was considered a practically ancient ailment—a “Great Pox” that, like tuberculosis or polio, Americans just don’t get anymore. There were just 6,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis in 2000, and the CDCbriefly thought the disease’s total elimination was within reach. FULL REPORT


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