Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes known as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and poor economic performance compared to other European countries, culminating with the Winter of Discontent of 1978–1979.
In April 2007, The Economist described Portugal as "a new sick man of Europe".
In the late 1990s the press labeled Germany with this term because of its economic problems, especially due to the costs of German reunification after 1990, which were estimated to amount to over 1.5 trillion.
In 2007, a report by Morgan Stanley referred to France as the "new sick man of Europe”.
sick man並不特指中國，在世界歷史上，葡萄牙、法國、德國，乃至大不列顛帝國都被稱作過sick man。
