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.

Penicillin is a type of drug called an antibiotic that can treat bacterial infections by killing the bacteria or making it difficult for the bacteria to grow. Before the availability of antibiotics, physicians could do little to help patients with bacterial infections, and many of those patients died of those infections. In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a Scottish physician, found a fungus growing in his lab that prevented the growth of certain bacteria. He termed the bacteria-killing substance penicillin. Later researchers built on Fleming’s findings and developed the substance into a drug, which became widely available after 1945. Penicillin was one of the first medications that could safely and effectively treat acute bacterial infections, such as staph infections and strep throat, as well as chronic bacterial infections such as syphilis. Additionally, by studying the mechanism of how penicillin works, researchers have created many other antibiotics. Penicillin and other antibiotics have allowed physicians to treat countless bacterial infections, and to develop new strategies to fight bacterial resistance to those antibiotics, saving the lives of millions.

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.