Entitled: "Moll dying of syphilis" Plate 5 from "A Harlot's Progress". Moll sits in a chair dying while 2 doctors argue over their cures. Her serving-woman is holding out her right hand toward the arguing doctors. Another woman rifles through a trunk, and a small boy sits by the fire. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary).