. Bones are attacked by tumors and in some cases eaten entirely away. The tumors also attack the walls of the heart or blood vessels causing aneurysms, balloon like sacs filled with blood. If the aneurysm burst, death is instantaneous. Syphilis can attack the brain in a condition known as paresis, in which the brain softens and produces paralyis and insanity. Optic nerves can be attacked causing blindness or inflicting deafness (Jones 2-4).The progression of th de disease in each stage had been known prior to 1932, the year the Tuskegee experiment began (Jones 2-4). In fact a similar study that observed the effect of untreated syphilis in man took place some forty years before Tuskegee in an experiment that took place in Olso, Norway (Jones 10). It is from this first study that much of the knowledge known about untreated syphilis previous to Tuskegee was uncovered. The difference, however, is that the men in Olso went untreated because there was no known treatment and in the case of Tuskegee treatment was deliberately withheld. In fact the discovery of the Salvaran treatment for syphilitic patients prompted the end to the Olso study in 1910.Racial differences create a plethora of opportunities through which a people can be labeled inferior. Jones explains that physicians and scientist have always been fascinated by the large number of ways in which blacks appeared to be different (Jones 16). Thus, the question Jones presents of racial medicine becomes a more contingent issue for why the experiment began and continued for decades. Preceding this fascination or preoccupation with establishing differences between the races is a reason, one that Jones describes as: There was a compelling reason for this prepccupation with establishing physical and mental distinctions between the races, one that transcended the disinterested pursuit of empirical facts. Most physicians who wrote about blacks during the ninete...
