No, clearly not against syphilis, against a variety of other preventable diseases (read the sentence before the excerpt). I'm generalizing that we jump to treatment over prevention in health. In the specific case of syphilis, a condom is a great start.

In retrospect, it could generalize even further than health because humans tend to follow "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." We cling to fixing things we break vs exercising even a bit of caution to reduce the chances of breaking things as a strategy, even when prevention is sometimes trivial or were talking about our own health.