Syphilis is a disease that, prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, was one of the leading causes of death in the population. Delivered in 1493 by the sailors of Columbus (according to some reports, received an infection from the aboriginal people of Haiti), a terrible infection spread throughout the world. Ten years later, syphilis claimed the lives of five million people. By spreading sexually, syphilis overcame all boundaries and natural barriers, and by 1512 the first epidemic of this disease had already been described in Japan.
The reasons for the high rate of spread of the venereal disease were:
- Genital mechanism of transmission of the causative agent of the disease. At the same time, all class, religious, national and racial barriers were overcome.
- The possibility of vertical infection - the transmission of the disease from the mother to the child.
- Long and very variable in terms of the incubation period of syphilis.
The period of latent syphilis
The time when there are no visible manifestations of the disease, it is customary to designate as an incubation period. There is no reliable information about the time after infection appears syphilis. The asymptomatic period in syphilis can give variants of the course from a week to two months. The absence of signs of a venereal disease contributes to the fact that a person who has been ill for a long time does not consult a doctor and continues to infect his sexual partners.
This situation creates great difficulties for the treatment and prevention of the spread of the disease:
- you can detect syphilis, but you can not determine how many days after infection it happened;
- impossibility of establishing, after what time after the moment of sexual contact syphilis is detected, makes it difficult to determine the source of infection;
- with promiscuous connections, it is impossible to determine how many syphilis suddenly manifest syphilis, to find the primary source.