[101] Is valde sibi videbatur adversus contagionem victus moderatione munitus: qua factum putavit, ut quum in nullum pene incideret, cujus non tota familia laboraverat, neminem adhuc e suis id malum attigerit, id quod et mihi et multis præterea jactavit, non admodum multis horis antequam extinctus est.“-Erasm. Epist. L. VII. ep. 4. col. 386. The date of the year of this letter from Sir Thomas More to Erasmus, 1520, is clearly erroneous, as is that of many other letters in this collection, for at that time the Sweating Sickness did not prevail in London; it is also sufficiently well known from other researches (Biographie Universelle—General Biographical Dictionary), that Ammonius died in 1517. The date of the month, however, 19th August, seems to be correct. Sprengel has, in consequence of this false date of the year, been misled to assume a specific epidemic Sweating Sickness as having taken place in the year 1520, (Book II. p. 686,) which is wholly unconfirmed.
[102] Grafton, p. 294, is very detailed. Compare Holinshed, p. 626. Baker, p. 286. Hall, p. 592.
[103] Godwyn, p. 23. Stow, p. 849.
[104] This, from the foregoing remark upon the death of Ammonius, may be concluded with the greatest probability.
[105] —“omnibus fere intra paucos dies decumbentibus, amissis plurimis, optimis atque honestissimis amicis.” Th. More in Erasmus’s Epist. L. VII. ep. 4. col. 386.
[106] Ibid. The only place where the disease is spoken of as having spread across the channel.
[107] Spangenberg. M. Chr. fol. 408. a.
[108] Crusius. T. II. p. 187.
[109] Wintzenberger, fol. 21. a. Angelus, p. 282. Spangenberg, loc. cit. Pingré, T. I. p. 483.
[110] Such was the name given in Germany to the already oft-mentioned pernicious fever with inflammation of the brain. We recognise it for the first time, as an epidemic, in France, in the year 1482. (See above, p. 189.) It frequently made its appearance throughout the whole of the sixteenth century.