THE SWEATING SICKNESS OF ENGLAND.
The name of Sweating Sickness was given to the great epidemic of fever that appeared in England in the fifteenth century, and from thence extended over Continental Europe. This epidemic broke out in the month of September, 1486, in the army of Henry VII., encamped in Wales, and soon reached London, extending over the British Isles with frightful rapidity. Its appearance was alarming and during its duration, which was only a month, it made a considerable number of victims. “It was so terrible and so acute that within the memory of man none had seen its like.”
This epidemic reappeared in England in 1513, 1517 and 1551. It was preceded by very moist weather and violent winds. The mortality was great, patients often dying in the space of two hours; in some instances half the population of a town being carried off. The epidemic of 1529 can only be called murderous; King Henry VIII. was attacked and narrowly escaped death. Although flying from village to village the nobility of England paid an enormous tribute to the King of Terrors. The Ambassador from France to London, M. du Bellay, writing on the 21st of July, 1529, remarks, “The day I visited the Bishop of Canterbury eighteen of the household died in a few hours. I was about the only one left to tell the tale, and am far from recovered yet.”
This same year the sweating sickness spread all over Europe. It made terrible ravages in Holland, Germany and Poland. At the famous synod of Luther and Zwingle, held at Marburg, the Reformed ministers seized by fear of death prayed for relief from the pestilence. At Augsburg in three months eighteen thousand people were attacked and fourteen hundred died.
This epidemic did not extend as far as Paris, but it developed in the north of France and Belgium. Mezeray mentions this fact in the following terms: “A certain disease appeared this year (1529), commencing in England. It was of a contagious nature, and passed over from France to the Lower Countries, and thus spread over most of Europe. Those attacked sweated profusely; it was for this reason that the malady was called the English Sweat. First one had a hard chill, then a very high fever, which carried the patient off in twenty-four hours, unless promptly remedied.”
Fernel, physician to Henry II., who practiced in Paris, likewise speaks of this sudorific sickness in one of his works.[25] He says: “Febres sudorificae quae insolentes magno terrore in omnem inferiorem Germaniam, in Galliam, Belgicam, et in Britanniam ab anno Christi millesimo quingentesimo vigesim autumno potissimum pervagatae sunt.”
It prevailed almost always in summer and autumn, especially when the weather was moist and foggy. Contrary to what is seen in other epidemics, it was observed that the weak and poor, the old and infants were not attacked as often as robust persons and those in affluent circumstances.
The symptoms noted by physicians, such as Kaye and Bacon, may be classed into three distinct periods: 1. The period of chill, characterized by pains and formication in the limbs an extraordinary prostration of the physical forces—a tremulous, shaky period. 2. The period of sweat, preceded by a burning heat all over the body and an unquenchable feverish thirst. The patient was agitated, disquieted by terror and despair. Many complained of spasms in the stomach, followed sometimes by nausea and vomiting, suffocation and lumbar pains—a constant symptom ever—headache, with palpitation of the heart and præcordial anxiety. 3. This period was announced by a high delirium, sometimes muttering, sometimes loquacious; a fetid sweaty odor, irregular pulse, coma, and, in the last-named condition, death always occurred.
The duration of the disease was most frequently but a few hours, rarely exceeding a day, whether the termination was favorable or fatal.
Convalescence was always long, often being complicated by diarrhœa or dropsy. It has been remarked in this connection that the malady might be confounded with the miliary sweat observed in Picardy and central France, but in the first named disease no cutaneous eruption was observed. Fernel clearly affirms this statement, as he says: “In this affection there is no carbuncle, bubo, exanthema nor eczema, but simply a hypersecretion of sweat.”