The pox (or Great Pox, as distinguished from the â  lesserâ   poxes such as chickenpox and smallpox) burst onto the historical scene in a 1494 epidemic that occurred in the French army, then fighting in Naples. The Italians promptly called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian (or Neapolitan) disease. As there were Spanish soldiers serving in the French army - recently returned from the New World, where some hypothesize the disease originated - some dubbed it the Spanish disease; as it spread across Europe, it became the Portuguese disease, the Polish disease, the Russian disease, and so on. (The name â  syphilisâ   comes much later from the name of a shepherd cursed by Apollo in a 1530 poem by Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro.) Giantmicrobes are based on actual microbes, cells, organisms and other critters, only 1,000,000 times actual size!