The political history of syphilis and its application to the AIDS epidemic.

The history of syphilis control from the mid-19th century through the present time is a strong argument for the need to enhance the public health efforts to find cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and to notify the partners of infected individuals. To do this, public policy must be changed to allow better case-finding (mandatory testing) and partner notification (mandatory reporting). The history of syphilis is such that one person in 22 was infected in this country in 1918. If we are to use this history to control the current HIV epidemic, control measures used for syphilis (before penicillin) are needed; these are equal attention to education, available health care, case-finding, and partner notification.