The Sweating Sickness

The sweating sickness which wasted England from 1486 to 1551 has today vanished. It seems to have distressed the heart and lungs and caused rheumatic pains. Sufferers had fits of trembling and sweated profusely. They were often dead within hours. There were five main outbreaks in 1486, 1507, 1518, 1529, and 1551 which ended many victims. The disease, which always struck first in London, never reached Wales or Scotland. The epidemic of 1529, which was markedly violent, was the only one to cross the Channel. It struck Holland and the Netherlands, Germany, and even the Swiss cantons.

And what was the disease that set off the epidemic in Madrid in August 1597 which was non-contagious and caused swelling of the groin, armpit, and throat? After the fever had broken out the victim was either cured in five or six days and mended slowly or died at once. It must be noted these were poor people, who lived in damp houses and slept on the ground. 

   

Different diseases break out at the same time. They have barely anything in common except infection. Such illnesses as diphtheria, cholerine, typhoid fever, picotte, smallpox, purple fever, the bosse, dendo, tac or harion, the trousse galant or mal chaud, whooping cough, scarlarina, grippe, influenza, intermittent fevers, sweating sickness, chlorosis, jaundice, consumption, falling sickness or epilepsy, vertigo, rheumatism, gravel, stones.

    

The underfed, vulnerable population could offer little resistance to these massive attacks. During the 1921-23 famine in Russia, an observer reports that malaria broke out all over the country and showed the same symptoms as in tropical zones, even as far north as the Arctic circle. Hunger was a magnifying factor in the spread of diseases. 

   

Epidemics leap from one human mass to another. Alonso Montecuccoli, sent to England by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, wrote that he would cross from Boulogne and not from Calais, where the English plague, tracking the trade route, had just landed.