SWEATING-SICKNESS, a disease which made its first appearance in England in 1485. It caused great mortality and was distinguished from the plague and other epidemic diseases by its rapid course.
From 1485 nothing more was heard of it till 1507, when the second outbreak occurred, which was much less fatal than the first. In 1517 was a third and much more severe epidemic. In Oxford and Cambridge it was very fatal, as well as in other towns, where in some cases half the population are said to have perished. The disease spread to Calais and Antwerp, but with these exceptions it was confined to England.
In 1528 the disease recurred for the fourth time, and with great severity. It first showed itself in London at the end of May, and speedily spread over the whole of England, though not into Scotland or Ireland. In London the mortality was very great; the court was broken up, and Henry VIII. left London, frequently changing his residence. It spread to the Continent, suddenly appearing at Hamburg, where in a few weeks more than a thousand persons died.
It caused fearful mortality through northern and eastern Europe. France, Italy and the southern countries were spared. It spread much in the same way as cholera. In a given place, it prevailed for generally not more than a fortnight. By the end of the year it had entirely disappeared, except in eastern Switzerland, where it lingered into the next year; and the terrible "English sweat" has to date never appeared again, at least in the same form, on the Continent. In 1551, however, it recurred in England and was described by an eye-witness, John Kaye or Caius, the eminent physician.
The disease began suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), giddiness, headache and severe pains in the neck, shoulders and limbs, with great prostration. After the cold stage, which might last from half-an-hour to three hours, followed the stage of heat and sweating. The characteristic sweat broke out suddenly, and, as it seemed to those accustomed to the disease, without any obvious cause. With the sweat, or after that was poured out, came a sense of heat, and with this headache and delirium, rapid pulse and intense thirst. Palpitation and pain in the heart were frequent symptoms. No eruption of any kind on the skin was generally observed ; Caius makes no allusion to such a symptom. In the later stages there was either general prostration and col lapse, or an irresistible tendency to sleep, which was thought to be fatal if the patient were permitted to give way to it. The malady
was remarkably rapid in its course, being sometimes fatal even in two or three hours, and some patients died in less than that time. Those who survived for twenty-four hours were considered safe.
The disease, unlike the plague, was not especially fatal to the poor, but rather, as Caius affirms, attacked the richer sort.
Causes.—Some attributed the disease to the English climate, its moisture and fogs, or to the intemperate habits of the English people, and to the frightful want of cleanliness in their houses and surroundings which is noticed by Erasmus in a well-known pas sage, and about which Caius is equally explicit. But the sweating sickness was in fact a specific infective disease, in the same sense as plague, typhus, scarlatina or malaria.
The only modern disease resembling sweating-sickness is that known as miliary fever ("Schweissfriesel," "suette miliaire" or the "Picardy sweat"), a malady which has been observed in France, Italy and southern Germany, but not in the United King dom. It occurs in limited epidemics, not lasting more than a week or two (at least in an intense form). The attack lasts longer than the sweating-sickness, is accompanied by eruption of vesicles, and is not usually fatal. The first clearly described epidemic was in 1718 (though probably it existed before), and the last in 1861. Between these dates about 175 epidemics have been counted in France alone.