THE SWEATING SICKNESS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 8965, 16 April 1890, Page 2

THE SWEATING SICKNESS.

A century later this country was at. tacked by another serious epidemic, the sweating sickness, which was so called because, in the words of an old writer, ‘ it did most stand in sweating from beginning to ending.’ It first made its appearance in England, and was generally known on the Continent as the ‘English sweat,’ It was observed generally to spare foreigners in this country, and also to be specially fatal to Englishmen when it appeared abroad ; and it was surmised that the immoderate use of beer, then so common in England, rendered 1 its inhabitants particularly susceptible to

the disease. Beginning in 1483, in the Army j of Richmond, afterward Henry VII, it spread quickly over the country with most fatal results. It seems to have been a species of violently inflammatory fever, which suffused the whole body with a fetid perspiration, the crisis generally occurring within twenty-four hours of the first seizure. Like most other epidemics, it was specially fatal to healthy, vigorous men in the prime of life, and hardly 1 per cent of such recovered. In London, where it raged with peculiar violence, two Lord Mayors and six Aldermen died in one week, first outbreak continued its ravages until the end of the year, its cessation being nearly coincident with a violent tempest on New Year’s day, 1486, which was supposed to have caused its disappearance. Further outbreaks of this epidemic occurred in England in 1506 and 1517, when again London suffered severely ; and in 1528 and 1529 not only this country, but also France and Germany, and, in a leas degree, Holland, Sweden and Poland were visited by the same pestilence. The last appearance of the sweating sickness in England was in 1551, when the disease was particularly virulent in Shrewsbury and the Valley of the Severn, —Chambers’ Journal,