What was sweating sickness england

But the Sweating Sickness was not always fatal. Symptoms were shockingly swift and dramatic, with death often occurring within a matter of hours.

The first symptoms were cold shivers and severe pains in the head and neck, followed by hot sweats and finally an overwhelming urge to sleep. Nobody knew how to prevent or to treat it, which meant there was widespread panic with the arrival of each onslaught.

The cause of the disease remains unknown to this day. In the summer of , the number of deaths quickly escalated. One man was more alarmed than most. Modern-day suggestions for possible causes include relapsing fever, hantavirus infection and anthrax. However, none of these fully shares the symptoms described by Caius. Since sweating sickness tended to occur only in random years, and mainly in summer, it may have been conveyed by a vector susceptible to climate change. One candidate would be a mosquito-borne viral disease similar to dengue fever, although dengue itself — as we all know from the current problems in West Africa — usually lasts for more than 24 hours and tends to be accompanied by a rash, which Caius does not mention.

Medical researchers are still searching old documents for clues, but we may never learn the cause of sweating sickness. Access provided by. Just what was English sweating sickness? This only added to the terror already heightened by its incredibly swift course. Although it was devastating in local populations, it had no major impact on the overall demographics of the country.

The panic in resulted in the abandonment of the University at Oxford which was shut down for six weeks. It also frustrated Henry VII, whose claim to the throne was very tenuous, as his coronation had to be postponed. However the pestilence went as rapidly as it had arrived and had completely disappeared five weeks later.

The coronation duly took place in Westminster Abbey on October 31st His position was bolstered by a hastily passed Act of Parliament which declared that the inheritance of the Crown had come as of right to him and the heirs of his body. The second outbreak occurred in , when coincidentally, Henry was approaching the end of his reign. It again began in London and quickly spread to both Oxford and Cambridge carrying off many distinguished scholars.

However, its duration was even shorter than the first outbreak and there are few records of it. The third outbreak, in , was far more serious. Henry VIII and his court abandoned London for Windsor but this provided no protection and many courtiers were carried off. Within six months it had appeared, again at random, over much of England and killed between one third and one half of the populations of the hardest hit towns.

Once again, many of the students and professors at both Oxford and Cambridge were amongst the victims. And, again characteristically, it stopped at the Scottish border. During this outbreak it was said to have passed across the English Channel to the continent and appeared at Calais where, however, it only affected Englishmen. The first outbreak which is reputed to have affected people other than the English was the epidemic which was also the most ferocious.

Once again, it began in London, spread rapidly across all of England but stopped at the Scottish and Welsh Borders. It did appear in Dublin where the victims all appear to have been of English stock. At this time, these countries, and Germany in particular, were already over-run by typhus and the plague.

Consequently medical historians now question whether the Sweating Sickness really was amongst the causes of the huge mortality that devastated eastern Europe in Back in England, however, there was no question.

The entire country was terrorised to the point that social organisation broke down, all agricultural activity stopped and famine set in. The last major outbreak was in and, uncharacteristically, it did not this time start in London but in Shrewsbury.

In that town, people died in the first few days. It quickly appeared across the whole of England but, yet again, stopped at the Scottish and Welsh Borders. There were reports that it was once again afflicting only Englishmen on the continent and that foreigners in England were unaffected.

This outbreak is responsible for one of the more unusual records in English history. However, they had left it too late and both were taken ill the evening they arrived in the village. The Duke died that night and his brother about half an hour later. The death of Henry meant that Charles succeeded him to the title and was himself the Duke of Suffolk for the few minutes before he died — the shortest tenure of any peerage that has been recorded.

The tomb of these unfortunate brothers can still be seen in the village churchyard. There has been much speculation about the origin of this disease. Some have attributed it to the English climate, its moisture and its fogs, or to the intemperate habits of the English people. It has also been attributed to the frightful want of cleanliness in their houses and surroundings which is noticed by Erasmus in a well-known passage, and about which Caius is equally explicit.