Fun fact : in Strasbourg, there’s a (very pretty) district called Petite France (“Little France”). Its name comes from a former hospital that treated syphilis at a time when Strasbourg was a part of Germany.
A lot of countries hate the French, but us the Dutch hate the Spanish more. That's what you get for invading us with an 80 year long war. We name an illness after you.
That's fair, that stupid war was such a waste of resources. Castille could have started the industrial revolution hadn't they wasted their wealth on a multigenerational war
I suggest more primary source research should be done about this claim before drawing such maps.
Speaking for Polish, I was not able to find any primary or even reliable secondary sources that claim anything about it being "turkish disease" (choroba turecka). Turkish disease, or a "sultan's disease" was referred to severe diarrhea resulting from "sea sickness", later to be associated to e. coli. bacteria. Is it possible that somewhere it got confused in translation when making this association?
I've also been unable to find anything about it being a german disease outside of modern or foreign sources which don't quote where they got that term from. The only terms in history I was able to validate here is "syfilis", "kiła", "przymiot" (1581) and... "franca" (1551). Today, the term "franca" is a general insult term.
Now... For the french one, and what I primarily suspect to be the most solid argument here is the fact that in most of Europe this was referred to as "sys - philos", so literally "swine loving", because in 1530 an Italian dude wrote a poem about it, where supposedly god Apollo sent down the first guy with that disease and his name was syphilus. That poem was subtitled as "morbus gallicus" (french disease). Is that because they hated the French, or perhaps because the french were already calling it Neapolitan disease because there was an outbreak of the disease in Naples in 1495... I don't know, I didn't research too much about it so correct me if I'm wrong. Just seems like the naming started between french and italians, and later spread
But, while I cannot speak for claims in other languages, I encourage you, if you speak a language, to do some digging to validate these claims. It's interesting how English-speaking sources are claiming something and there's seemingly no sources on it. How do those stories originate I wonder. Other than the french argument, how many of those can be validated?
I can confirm that for Croatia it's accurate to a point. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century two separate towns had an outbreak of syphilis, and therefore the disease was named after these two places locally. From my understanding, in both cases the disease was mostly transmitted due to poor hygiene, and not much through sexual contact. In the second town, aside from the aforementioned, a bunch of kids and their families were infected because the local doctor vaccinated the kids against pox using materials from an infected child, unintentionally.
But otherwise for the most part syphilis was called Gallic disease.
Says a lot about the general consensus about a country that none of your neighboring countries think you could be the source of their rise in an STD. Some countries fuck. Some don’t.
Respect for CroatiaEdit, just noticed that scotland apparently blames all
Not really deserved 😂 (For more info see my other comment in this thread.)
Well, at least they partially changed xenophobia for phobia against the other village... anyway, galic desease is just france
It's pretty clear the French are to blame.
Désolé
Uh what's the french word for "antibiotic," I need to tell a friend
"antibiotique"
La maladie Anglaise.
It sure seems like everyone blames either the French, or someone who got it from the French...
Fifth Spidey popping up in the middle: "Bonjour!"
Croatia in a chair in the corner.
Scotland was just like "it's everyone else's fault."
Fun fact : in Strasbourg, there’s a (very pretty) district called Petite France (“Little France”). Its name comes from a former hospital that treated syphilis at a time when Strasbourg was a part of Germany.
The koala that was patient zero:
That must have been one sexy koala, though, to be fucked by all those french, spaniards, italians, germans, poles, and turks.
We don't know what the origin of syphilis is.
It came from the Americas, we swapped it for smallpox
I didn't say where, lol.
Indeed you didn't, except that that's how I read "what its origin is"
A lot of countries hate the French, but us the Dutch hate the Spanish more. That's what you get for invading us with an 80 year long war. We name an illness after you.
That's fair, that stupid war was such a waste of resources. Castille could have started the industrial revolution hadn't they wasted their wealth on a multigenerational war
I suggest more primary source research should be done about this claim before drawing such maps. Speaking for Polish, I was not able to find any primary or even reliable secondary sources that claim anything about it being "turkish disease" (choroba turecka). Turkish disease, or a "sultan's disease" was referred to severe diarrhea resulting from "sea sickness", later to be associated to e. coli. bacteria. Is it possible that somewhere it got confused in translation when making this association? I've also been unable to find anything about it being a german disease outside of modern or foreign sources which don't quote where they got that term from. The only terms in history I was able to validate here is "syfilis", "kiła", "przymiot" (1581) and... "franca" (1551). Today, the term "franca" is a general insult term.
Now... For the french one, and what I primarily suspect to be the most solid argument here is the fact that in most of Europe this was referred to as "sys - philos", so literally "swine loving", because in 1530 an Italian dude wrote a poem about it, where supposedly god Apollo sent down the first guy with that disease and his name was syphilus. That poem was subtitled as "morbus gallicus" (french disease). Is that because they hated the French, or perhaps because the french were already calling it Neapolitan disease because there was an outbreak of the disease in Naples in 1495... I don't know, I didn't research too much about it so correct me if I'm wrong. Just seems like the naming started between french and italians, and later spread
But, while I cannot speak for claims in other languages, I encourage you, if you speak a language, to do some digging to validate these claims. It's interesting how English-speaking sources are claiming something and there's seemingly no sources on it. How do those stories originate I wonder. Other than the french argument, how many of those can be validated?
I can confirm that for Croatia it's accurate to a point. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century two separate towns had an outbreak of syphilis, and therefore the disease was named after these two places locally. From my understanding, in both cases the disease was mostly transmitted due to poor hygiene, and not much through sexual contact. In the second town, aside from the aforementioned, a bunch of kids and their families were infected because the local doctor vaccinated the kids against pox using materials from an infected child, unintentionally.
But otherwise for the most part syphilis was called Gallic disease.
Says a lot about the general consensus about a country that none of your neighboring countries think you could be the source of their rise in an STD. Some countries fuck. Some don’t.
Croatia is just out there accepting blame nobody else is giving them
Seems to me it all came from France
Norway is left out because we call it syphilis.
But from now on I will start referring to it as "Danskepesten" (Danish plague)
Edit: autocorrect had changed the made-up word
Ottoman one should be "French disease" as well though. While Frenk was used as European as in general, it comes from French.
It was a helluva night.
"It was the ancient France, specifically!"
Scotland and Poland seem awfully judgy.
Did pland blame germans and turks at the same time?