RealClearScience has a historical article about an Austrian physician who in 1917 treated late-stage syphilis by giving his patients malaria. It worked to some degree in half his patients, curing roughly a quarter of them and helping another quarter. The curative agent, which won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, was the high fever triggered by the malaria.
What puzzles me is that the author never mentions that syphilis sufferers had long treated the disease by soaking in hot springs or baking in saunas which create some of the same physiological conditions as a high fever, without the bacterial sequelae.
