Dorothy Andersen studied cystic fibrosis in the United States during the early 1900s. In 1935, Andersen discovered lesions in the pancreas of an infant during an autopsy, which led her to classify a condition she named cystic fibrosis of the pancreas. In 1938, Andersen became the first to thoroughly describe symptoms of the medical condition cystic fibrosis. Commonly mistaken for celiac disease prior to the 1900s, Andersen defined cystic fibrosis as the build-up of pancreatic fluid in the body caused by the blockage of pancreatic ducts, and she determined that the two conditions were symptomatically different. Andersen developed an early method for diagnosing cystic fibrosis. By conceptualizing cystic fibrosis and defining its symptoms, Andersen laid the foundation for treatments that enabled infants diagnosed with the disease to survive into adulthood.

Hideyo Noguchi researched bacteria, including Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis, in Japan and the US during the early 1900s. Syphilis is a bacterial infection that spreads primarily through sexual transmission and can cause symptoms such as rashes, genital sores, and even organ damage. Noguchi recognized that Treponema pallidum causes neurosyphilis, which is when the syphilis infection spreads to the covering of the brain, the brain itself, or the spinal cord. Before Noguchi’s work, researchers knew about Treponema pallidum and the symptoms of the disease but did not know that untreated syphilis could lead to neurosyphilis. Additionally, Noguchi worked to alter and improve methods to diagnose syphilis. Noguchi’s work helped future researchers and doctors better diagnose people with syphilis, assisted them in understanding how to treat the disease’s long-term side effects, and helped them reduce the spread of syphilis, including between pregnant people and their fetuses.

Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, or STD, caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Common symptoms of the disease include painful urination and genital discharge. There are records of historical discussions of gonorrhea in ancient civilizations and during the Middle Ages, but scientists did not begin investigating the scientific causes and treatments of the STD until the sixteenth century. In the 1700s, physicians attributed gonorrhea to the same cause as another STD, syphilis. Later, in the 1800s, researchers discovered the two diseases were not the same and identified the bacteria N. gonorrhoeae that causes gonorrhea. By the 1900s, researchers began using antibiotics to target the bacteria, but many drugs eventually developed antibiotic resistance. In 2020, the World Health Organization, or WHO, estimated that 82.4 million individuals contracted gonorrhea globally, and as of 2024, researchers continue to experiment with various antibiotic drugs to provide adequate treatment for the disease.

In 1944, Joseph Earl Moore and colleagues published “The Treatment of Early Syphilis with Penicillin: A Preliminary Report of 1418 Cases,” hereafter “Treatment of Early Syphilis,” in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Moore and colleagues’ article was one of the first to study and explore the use of penicillin, an antibiotic that can kill bacteria, as a treatment for humans with syphilis, which is a bacterial disease that spreads through sexual contact. In its early stages, syphilis can cause rashes and genital sores, but in its late stages, it can also lead to organ damage. In “Treatment of Early Syphilis,” Moore and his colleagues explain that they conducted a study to determine the effects and optimal dose of penicillin in humans with early syphilis. The authors found that giving individuals with syphilis specific doses of penicillin can heal their syphilitic lesions and eradicate the bacterium that causes syphilis from their bodies. “Treatment of Early Syphilis” was one of the first articles to demonstrate that syphilis, specifically early syphilis, could be effectively treated with penicillin, the drug that physicians still most commonly use as of 2024 to treat the sexually transmitted disease.