Nobody wants to hear about STDs, and nobody wants to find out they have one. Unfortunately, they are part of life and all too commonplace, especially on some college campuses.
One STD in particular deserves a mention not only in health classes, but in the history books as well for the amount of devastation it's caused: Syphilis.
Turns out, the blame for syphilis gets passed around (you can insert your own joke here), but the true origin is still unknown. Two major hypotheses have been brought up, one saying that it was carried from the Americas to Europe thanks to Christopher Columbus, the other saying it had been laying dormant in Europe for some time.
Those two probable causes weren't considered when the different European nations came across it.
French troops returned with it in the late 1400s, leading to Italians, Polish, and Germans coining the term "French disease." The French called it the "Italian disease" to alleviate some of the blame. Other nations couldn't figure out who to blame; the Dutch called it the "Spanish disease," the Russians called it the "Polish disease," and the Turks called it the "Christian disease."
The name "syphilis" came from Italian physician and poet Firolamo Fracastoro in a poem titled "Syphilis, or The French Disease." Looks like a name finally stuck!
