CHAPTER V.
THE SWEATING SICKNESS.
The strange disease which came to be known all over Europe as sudor Anglicus, or the English Sweat, was a new type or species of infection first seen in the autumn of 1485. Polydore Virgil, an Italian scholar and man of affairs, who arrived in England in 1501, became, in effect, the court historian of Henry VII.’s reign, and of the events which led up to the overthrow of Richard III. at Bosworth Field on the 22nd of August 1485; his account of the movements of Henry Tudor, from his landing at Milford Haven on Saturday the 6th of August until his triumphal entry into London on Saturday the 27th of the same month, is so minute that he must be assumed to have had access to journals written at the time. Polydore’s account of the sweat begins with the statement that it showed itself on the first descent of Henry upon the island—sub primum descensum in insulam[480]. The last continuator of the ancient chronicle of Croyland abbey, who was still making his entries when Bosworth Field was fought, not far from Croyland, and who closed his annals the year after, records an incident which seems to show that the sweat had been prevalent before the battle. Thomas, lord Stanley, lay at Atherstone, not far from Bosworth, with five thousand men nominally in the service of Richard, and was summoned by the king to bring up his force before the battle. He excused himself, says the Croyland annalist, on the ground that he was suffering from the sweating sickness[481]. I shall examine that evidence, and the general statement of Polydore Virgil, in a later part of this chapter. Meanwhile we may take it that the outbreak of the sweat was somehow associated in popular rumour with the victorious expedition of Henry Tudor. Writers on the English sweat hitherto have had to depend on the somewhat meagre and not always consistent statements of annalists for their knowledge of its first authentic occurrence. I am now able to adduce the testimony of a manuscript treatise on the new epidemic, written by a physician while it was still prevalent in London, and elaborately dedicated to Henry VII., if not composed by his order[482]. The author is Thomas Forrestier, styled in the title a Doctor of Medicine and a native of Normandy, tarrying in London. Whatever his relation with the Tudor court may have been, his name does not occur in the patents as one of the king’s physicians. It appears, indeed, that he had got into trouble in London some two years after this date; for, on the 28th of January, 1488, the king granted to him a general pardon, “with pardon for all escapes and evasions out of the Tower of London or elsewhere, and remissions of forfeiture of all lands and goods[483].” Probably he went back after this to his native Normandy: at all events, he is next heard of in practice at Rouen, where he published, in 1490, a Latin treatise on the plague, one of the first productions of the printing-press of that city.
It is in the opening sentences of his printed book on the plague[484], and not in his manuscript on the sweat, that he fixes the date when the latter began. The sweating sickness, he says, first unfurled its banners in England in the city of London, on the 19th of September, 1485; and then follow in the text certain astrological signs, representing the positions or conjunctions of heavenly bodies on that date. The London chronicles of the time assign dates for the beginning of the epidemic which differ somewhat from Dr Forrestier’s. One of them, a manuscript of the Cotton collection, by an anonymous citizen of London, records the entry of Henry VII. into the capital on the 27th of August, and proceeds: “And the XXVII day of September began the sweating syknes in London, whereof died Thomas Hyll that yer mayor, for whom was chosen sir William Stokker, knyght, which died within V days after of the same disease. Then for him was chosen John Warde.... And this yere died of that sickness, besides ii mayors above rehersed, John Stokker, Thomas Breten, Richard Pawson, Thomas Norland, aldermen, and many worshipful commoners[485].” In the better known but not always equally full chronicle of Fabyan, who was then a citizen, and afterwards sheriff and alderman, the date of Henry’s reception by the mayor and citizens at Hornsey Park is given as the 28th of August, the reference to the sweat being as follows: “And upon the XI day of Octobre next following, than beynge the swetynge sykeness of newe begun, dyed the same Thomas Hylle, mayor, and for him was chosen sir William Stokker, knyght and draper, which dyed also of the sayd sickness shortly after.” The only other particular date extant for the sweat of 1485 comes from the country: Lambert Fossedike, abbot of Croyland, died there of the sweating sickness, after an illness of eighteen hours, on the 14th of October[486].
Apart from the hitherto unknown manuscript of Forrestier, these are the only contemporary references. Stow, who must have had access to some journal of the time, says that the king entered London on the 27th August and that “the sweating began the 21st September, and continued till the end of October, of the which a wonderful number died,” including the two mayors and four other aldermen, as above. Hall’s chronicle, which has been the principal source used by Hecker and others, reproduces the account of the sweat by Polydore Virgil almost word for word; and Polydore’s account was certainly not begun until after 1504 and was not published until 1531. Bernard André, historiographer and poet laureate of Henry VII., was present at the entry into London on the 27th August; but he gives no particulars of the sweat of that autumn, in his ‘Life of Henry VII.,’ although it is probable that his ‘Annals of Henry VII.’ would have furnished some information had they not been lost for the year 1485, as it is to his extant annals for the year 1508 that we owe almost all that is known of the second epidemic of the sweat in that year. The state papers of the time do not contain a single reference to the epidemic, although it was so active in the city of London as to carry off two mayors and four aldermen within a few days, and was besides, as Polydore Virgil says, “a new kind of disease, from which no former age had suffered, as all agree.” London was full of people, including some who had stood by Henry Tudor in France, others who had joined his standard in Wales, and still others who came to do homage to the new dynasty; and there is evidence remaining of hundreds of suitors, great and small, attending the court to receive the reward of their services in patents and grants, as well as evidence in the wardrobe accounts of the bustle of preparing for the Coronation on the 30th of October. But in all the extant state records of those busy weeks, there is not a scrap of writing to show that such a thing as a pestilence was raging within the narrow bounds of the city and under the walls of the royal palace in the Tower. It remains, therefore, to make what we can out of the medical essay which Dr Forrestier wrote for the occasion.
In his later reference of 1490, he says that more than fifteen thousand were cut off in sudden death, as if by the visitation of God, many dying while walking in the streets, without warning and without being confessed. That number of the dead need not be taken as at all exact: nor does it appear whether it is meant for London or for the whole country. But the dramatic suddenness of the attack is illustrated by particular cases in his original treatise of 1485, although deaths so sudden are unheard of in any infection:—
“We saw two prestys standing togeder and speaking togeder, and we saw both of them dye sodenly. Also in die—proximi we se the wyf of a taylour taken and sodenly dyed. Another yonge man walking by the street fell down sodenly. Also another gentylman ryding out of the cyte [date given] dyed. Also many others the which were long to rehearse we have known that have dyed sodenly.” Gentlemen and gentlewomen, priests, righteous men, merchants, rich and poor, were among the victims of this sudden death. Of the symptoms he says: “And this sickness cometh with a grete swetyng and stynkyng, with rednesse of the face and of all the body, and a contynual thurst, with a grete hete and hedache because of the fumes and venoms.” He mentions also “pricking the brains,” and that “some appear red and yellow, as we have seen many, and in two grete ladies that we saw, the which were sick in all their bodies and they felt grete pricking in their bodies. And some had black spots, as it appeared in our frere (?) Alban, a noble leech on whose soul God have mercy!”
Both in his pathology and in his copious appendix of formulae he directs attention to the heart, as the organ that was suddenly overpowered by the pestilential venoms. Many died, he would have us believe, because they listened to the false leeches, who professed to know the disease and to have treated it before. A considerable part of his space is occupied with the denunciation of these irregular practitioners, their greed and their ignorance,—a theme which is a common one in the prefaces of Elizabethan medical works also. It appears that the false leeches wrote and put letters upon gates and church doors, or upon poles, promising to help the people in their sickness. They were also injudicious in the choice of their remedies—some ordaining powders and medicines that are hot until the thirtieth degree and over, others ale or wine, or hot spices, “and many other medicines they have, the which, the best of them, is nothing worth.” These false leeches knew not the causes,—their complexions, their ages, the regions, the times of the year, the climate,—evidently the astrological lore which gave Chaucer’s physician, a century earlier, his academical standing or his superiority to the vulgar quacks of his day. Those who fell into the hands of quacks, Forrestier implies, had an indifferent chance. Many died for want of help and good guiding; whereas many a one was healed that had received a medicine in due order, “and if he purge himself before.” The clearly written and fully detailed formulae at the end of his essay are so far evidence that Forrestier did not traffic in secret remedies. The first part of the essay is occupied with the doctrine of causes—the nigh causes and the far. The far causes were astrological; but the nigh causes, although they are altogether inadequate to account for sweating sickness as a special type, and are indeed little else than the stock list of nuisances quoted in earlier treatises upon the plague, are suggestive enough of the condition of London streets and houses at the time, and will be referred to in a later part of the chapter.
The account of the treatment given by Polydore Virgil, and from him copied into Hall’s chronicle, is probably the experience of later epidemics of the sweat, although it comes into the history under the year 1485. The evil effects of throwing off the bed-clothes, and of drinking great draughts of cold water, and, on the other hand, the benefits of lying still with the hands and feet well covered, are among the topics discussed in letters during the epidemic of 1517, one of those which came within the historian’s own experience in England. But it is clear from Forrestier’s essay of 1485 that there were great differences in the regimen of patients in the sweat during its very first season, some adopting the hot and cordial treatment, others, perhaps, the cooling, just as in the smallpox long after. Bernard André implies that there was a correct and an incorrect regimen also in the second epidemic of 1508, and there is evidence of conflicting advice in the letters on the sweats of 1517 and 1528. If there were any better regimen in the later epidemics than in the earlier, as Polydore Virgil says there was, it was merely the wisdom of avoiding extremes. Hence the misleading character of his remark that, after an immense loss of life, “a remedy was found, ready to hand for everyone.” Bacon in his ‘Reign of Henry VII.’ took from Polydore almost word for word all that he says of the “remedy” of the sweat; and the unreal word-spinning thus begun was carried to its full development by bishop Sprat, the historian of the Royal Society (1667), who mistakes the “remedy” for some arcanum or potent drug, gives my lord Verulam the credit of preserving the prescription for the use of posterity, and adduces it as an encouragement to the Royal Society to seek among the secrets of nature for an equally efficacious “antidote” to the plague.
The language of historians is that the sweat of 1485 spread over the whole kingdom. We hear of it definitely at Oxford[487] where it “lasted but a month or six weeks” and is said to have cut off many of the scholars before they could disperse. It is heard of also with equal definiteness at Croyland abbey. There is also mention of it in a contemporary calendar of the mayor of Bristol, but without any special reference to that city[488]. Beyond these notices, there appears to be nothing to show that the sweat went all through England in the late autumn or early winter of 1485. But we may take the following passage by Forrestier, in the dedication of his tract to the king, as expressing the state of matters, with perhaps some exaggeration: