Health officials look back on the state of syphilis treatment in 1911

On January 1, 2011, the British medical journal The Lancet published an editorial from exactly 100 years before. According to its current editor, this article shows how far the world has come in the treatment of syphilis, among other things.

Executive editor Bill Summerskill told NPR News that in 1911, the first modern cure for syphilis had practically just been invented.

Called arsphenamine, the compound was first isolated by immunologist Paul Ehrlich in 1909.

He had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine just a year earlier.

Summerskill remarked that this discovery "marked the dawn of the anti-microbial era," quoted by the news source.

Today, syphilis is cured with relative ease through a course of penicillin injections, though more advanced cases of the disease may take longer to treat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports.

The hallmarks of syphilis include rashes, sores, fever, swollen glands and fatigue. The agency warns that these symptoms may often be mistaken for the signs of other illnesses.

Periodically purchasing online testing services may help determine one's state of sexual health and prevent the spread of the disease.

An estimated 36,000 Americans have syphilis, according to the CDC.