The Syphilis Blame Game

Do you remember how during his first term Donald Trump kept calling Covid the "Chinese Virus"? 

This impulse to point fingers across borders is nothing new. When syphilis swept Europe after the 1495 Naples outbreak, no nation would own it. Instead, blame spread faster than an STD in a retreating French army platoon: the Russians called it the "Polish Disease," the Poles called it the "German Disease," the Germans called it the "French Disease," and the French called it the "Italian Disease."

You can explore this syphilis blame game more closely on Blaming the Neighbours: what Europe called Syphilis. This interactive map tracks who blamed whom in a brilliant visualization of early-modern European grudges. It expertly reveals how no population wanted to admit the contagion had started at home, so ended up naming the disease after their closest rival or neighbor.

The map visualizes these naming relationships as a directed graph. "The French Disease" absolutely dominates the map. A dozen nations - including Italy, Germany, England, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and Scotland - all pointed their arrows firmly at France.

The reason everyone blamed France wasn't due to a near universal dislike of the French; it was a direct consequence of King Charles VIII’s massive, multinational army marching down the Italian peninsula and then retreating back across Europe, carrying the brand-new infection with them.

Blaming the Neighbours is a masterclass in how interactive cartography can breathe life into historical datasets. It provides an easy-to-read visual overview of how fear, nationalism, and prejudice shaped the language of disease long before Fox News, Twitter, and Donald Trump stumbled upon the brilliant excuse of blaming 'foreigners'.