The Epidemics of the Middle Ages

by J. F. C. Hecker; John Caius

The following years were by no means all marked by a complete failure in produce. The year 1530 was, on the contrary, plentiful, there being only some partial failures, as, for example, that which arose from a great flood in the district of the Saal, which occurred in the midst of the harvest time[220]. A very cold spring and a wet cold summer followed in 1531, with only occasional fine days; yet the ground was not altogether unproductive, and the great distress which would otherwise have been felt in Thuringia and Saxony, was checked by the establishment of granaries, so that the people were not obliged, as they often were in Swabia, to mow the green corn that they might dry the ears in ovens, and support life upon the yet unripe grain.

The years 1532 and 1533, were again very sterile, as also 1534, in consequence of the great heat and dryness of the summer. Finally, in the year 1535, the regular change of the seasons, and with it a prosperous state of cultivation, seemed to be restored, and the scarcity ceased[221]. The reports from different localities in Germany vary much, but the scarcity prevailed for full seven years[222], (from 1528 to 1534,) and since its causes were not discoverable, because it was only seen by each observer in his own narrow circle, the old German adage was often called to mind: “If there is to be a scarcity, it is of no avail even should all the mountains be made of flour.”[223]

Sect. 5.—Sweating Sickness in Germany, 1529.

These facts are sufficient for a preliminary sketch of the background on which moved the spectre of England, to which we now return. How long the sweating sickness may have raged there after Henry the VIIIth quitted his secluded place of refuge in order to return to his capital, no one has left any written account to show. That it spread very rapidly over the whole kingdom is decidedly to be presumed, and might probably still be easily ascertainable from the written records of different places. The notion that it did not rage violently in any town more than a few weeks, is justified by corresponding phenomena of more recent occurrence, yet no doubt it continued to exist among the people, though in a mitigated degree, till the mild winter season. But there are not even the slightest data by which it can be made out that it was still in England during the summer of 1529. As an epidemic it certainly existed no longer, yet on a consideration of the state of the air in that year, it is not to be denied that isolated cases of Sweating Fever may have appeared; for in pestilences of this kind, provided their original causes continue, there always occur some straggling cases[224]. The Sweating Sickness did not advance westward to Ireland, nor did it pass the Scottish border; the historians, who would certainly have recorded so calamitous an event, are entirely silent respecting such an occurrence. The tragedy was, however, destined to be enacted elsewhere; other nations were to play their part in it.

Hamburgh was the first place on the continent in which the Sweating Sickness broke out. Men’s minds were still in great excitement there in consequence of the events of the few preceding months. The Protestants had, after long and stormy contests, at length vanquished the Papists. Under the wise direction of Bugenhagen the great work of Reformation was just completed. The monasteries were abolished, the monks dismissed, schools were established, and peace again returned with the enjoyment of ecclesiastical freedom. Just at this moment[225] the dreaded pestilence, of which wonderful accounts had been so long and so often heard, unexpectedly made its appearance. It immediately excited, as it had ever done in England, general dismay, and before any instructions as to its treatment could be obtained, either from the English or from Germans who had been in England, it destroyed daily from forty to sixty, and altogether, within the space of twenty-two days[226], about 1100 inhabitants, for such was the number of coffins which were at this time manufactured by the undertakers. The duration of the great mortality, for thus we would designate the more violent raging of this pestilence, was, however, much shorter, and may be roughly estimated at about nine days, for from the fragment of a letter received from Hamburgh, which was dispatched to Wittenberg on the 8th of August, by a person who was at that time burgomaster, it appears that, for some days past, no one had died of the Sweating Fever, excepting one or two drunkards, and that the citizens were then beginning to take breath again. We may thus judge, from the unauthenticated account here mentioned, that the disease lasted about a fortnight longer, and that the loss of lives amounted to 2000. At all events, however, the pestilence manifested itself on the continent with the same malignity which was peculiar to it from the first, and if the assertion made at a distance respecting the mortality in Hamburgh, were overcharged[227], yet there certainly existed sufficient foundation for exaggerations of this sort, which are never wanting in times of such great danger. The historians of this, even at that time, powerful and civilized commercial town, have on the whole said but little regarding this important event—a circumstance easily explicable from the constant occupation of men’s minds in religious affairs, and from the well known short visitation of the epidemic, which, like a transient meteor, needed quick and cautious observation if any valuable information respecting the occurrence was to be transmitted to posterity. Some particulars of its first origin have, however, been preserved amid a mass of general assertions which convey no information. Thus it appears that the Sweating Sickness did not show itself in the town until a Captain Hermann Evers, just about the time mentioned, (the 25th of July,) returned from England, bringing on board with him a number of young people, (probably travellers as well as sailors,) of whom at least twelve died of this disease within two days[228]. According to another account, those who died were not taken ill in England, but on the voyage, and the pestilence broke out after the rest of the crew had disembarked. On this point we have further a most respectable testimony to the fact, that in the night after the landing of Hermann Evers, four men died in Hamburgh of the Sweating Sickness[229].

If we examine a little more closely these very valuable accounts, the credibility of which there is no reason to doubt, it must especially be taken into account, that at this time the Sweating Sickness had ceased to exist as an epidemic in England for at least half a year, that its appearance in single cases, although not contradictory to general views, is nevertheless by no means borne out by proof from historical evidence, and that thus it is a gratuitous and unsupported assumption that the return of Hermann Evers’ crew was connected with any Sweating Sickness at all in England. If we consider, on the other hand, that the North Sea, even in ordinary years, is very foggy, so that, owing to the prevalence of north-west winds, it precipitates very heavy rain clouds over Germany; and if we bear in mind, that in the year 1529 it produced far heavier fogs than usual, we shall perceive in its waters the principal cause why the English Sweating Sickness was then developed in its greatest violence, and we may thence assume, with a greater degree of probability, that this pestilence broke out among the crew of Hermann Evers spontaneously, and without any connexion with England, in the same way, perhaps, as it did formerly on board Henry the VIIth’s fleet. This supposition is strengthened by the circumstance that the ships of those times were excessively filthy, and the kind of life spent on board them was, independently of the wretched provision, uncomfortable in the highest degree, nay, almost insupportable, so that even in short voyages, the scurvy, which was the dread of sailors in those days, was of very common occurrence. Finally, we still possess the most distinct accounts, that unusual occurrences took place in the North Seas. Thus during Lent it was observed with astonishment at Stettin, that porpoises came in numbers up the frische Haff as far as the bridge, and that the Baltic cast on its shores many dead animals of this kind[230], so that we are fully justified in concluding that there existed at that time a more intense development than usual of morbific influences in the marine atmosphere.

With respect, however, to the influence which the companions of Hermann Evers, impregnated as they were with the odour of the Sweating Sickness, had on the inhabitants of Hamburgh, it cannot be denied, that their intercourse with those inhabitants, in the filthy and narrow lanes of that commercial city, may have given an impulse to the eruption of the pestilence, so far as to make the already existing fuel more inflammable, or to furnish the first sparks for its ignition: yet it is equally undeniable that, under the existing circumstances, the epidemic Sweating Sickness would have broken out in Germany even without the presence of Captain Evers, although it might, perhaps, have been some weeks later, and not have made its first appearance in Hamburgh, whose inhabitants, owing to the constant prevalence of the North Sea fog, were, to all appearance, already prepared for the first reception of this fatal disease.

To determine to a day when epidemics which have been long in preparation have broken out, is, even for an observer who is present, exceedingly difficult, nay, sometimes, under the most favourable circumstances, impossible; for there occur in these visitations, certain transitions into the epidemic form, of diseases which are allied to it, as well as a gradual conversion into it of morbid phenomena, which have usually begun some time before. Unless we are greatly mistaken, such was the case in the pestilence of which we are now treating; although it must be confessed, that we can obtain no precise information on this point from the physicians of those times. The following statements, for the absolute precision of which we cannot pledge ourselves after a lapse of 300 years, must therefore be judged according to this general experience; and though singly they may prove little, yet taken altogether, they are capable of demonstrating the peculiar and almost wonderful manner in which the Sweating Fever spread over Germany.

In Lübeck, the next city in the Baltic, the Sweating Sickness appeared about the same time; for so early as the Friday before St. Peter in vinculis (30th of July), it was known, that on the preceding night a woman had died of it[231]. On the following days cases of death fearfully increased, and the disorder soon raged so violently, that people were again reminded of the Black Death of 1349. The inhabitants died without number, as well in the city as in the environs, and the consternation was equal to that felt in Hamburgh[232]. In general, as was everywhere the case, robust young people of the better classes were affected, while, on the other hand, children and poor people living in cellars and garrets almost all of them escaped[233].

Now one might, either on the supposition of a progressive alteration in the atmosphere, such as occurs in the influenza, or on that of a communication of the disease from man to man, which, however, cannot be considered as a principal cause of this epidemic, have expected a gradual extension of the Sweating Sickness from Hamburgh and Lübeck to the surrounding country. This did not, however, in fact, take place; for the disease next broke out at Twickau, at the foot of the Erzgebirge, distant from Hamburgh fifty German miles, and without having previously visited the rich commercial city of Leipzig. By the 14th of August, nineteen persons who had died of it, were buried at Twickau; and on one of the following nights above a hundred[234] sickened, whence it is to be deduced that the pestilence was severe at that place.