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SECT. 3.-CAUSES.

It was thought remarkable, even at that time, that the Sweating Sickness did not extend beyond the limits of England, and that, remaining the unenviable property of that nation, it did not even spread to Scotland, Ireland, or Calais, which belonged to Britain. Much, doubtless, was owing to the peculiarity of the climate, more still to atmospherical changes, and something also to the habits of the people and the circumstances of the times. It plainly appeared in the sequel that the English Sweating Sickness was a spirit of the mist, which hovered amid the dark clouds. Even in ordinary years, the atmosphere of England is loaded with these clouds during considerable periods, and in damp seasons they would prove the more injurious to health, as the English of those times were not accustomed to cleanliness, moderation

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[1] See the author's History of Medicine, Book II. p. 311.
[2] Grafton, p. 161, and the other chroniclers.
[3] Wood, loc. cit.


tin their diet, or even comfortable refinements. Gluttony was common among the nobility as well as among the lower classes; all were immoderately addicted to drinking, [1] and the manners of the age sanctioned this excess at their banquets and their festivities. If we consider that the disease mostly attacked strong and robust men-that portion of the people who abandoned themselves without restraint to all the pleasures of the table-while women, old men, and children, almost entirely escaped, it is obvious that a gross indulgence of the appetite must have had a considerable share in the production of this unparalleled plague.

To this may be added, the humidity of the year 1485, which is represented by most chronicles as very remarkable. [2] Throughout the whole of Europe the rain fell in torrents, and inundations were frequent. Damp weather is not prejudicial to health if it be merely temporary, but if the rain be excessive for a series of years, so that the ground is completely saturated, and the mists attract baneful exhalations out of the earth, man must necessarily suffer from the noxious state of the soil and atmosphere. Under these circumstances epidemics must inevitably follow. The five preceding years had been unusually wet, [3] 1485 proved equally so; the last hot and droughty summer was that of 1479. Extensive inundations of the Tiber, the Po, the Danube, the Rhine, and most of the other great rivers took place in 1480, and were attended with the usual consequences, the deterioration of the air, misery, and disease. [5] The greatest inundation ever remembered in England was that of the Severn, in October, 1483. It was long afterwards called the Duke of Buckingham's Great Water, [6] because it frustrated the rebellion of this powerful subject against Richard III., whom he had been instrumental in placing upon the throne; and consequently defeated also the first enterprise of Henry VII. It lasted full ten days, and the tremendous ravages occasioned by the overwhelming torrent dwelt long in the memory of the people.
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[1] The luscious Greek wines were at this time the most in vogue, especially Cretan wine, Malmsey, and Muschat. Lemnius, de compl. L. II. fol. 111. b. Reusner, p. 70.
[2] Werlich, p. 248.

[3] Spangenberg, Mansf. Chr. fol. 395. f.
[4] Werlich, p. 236. Spangenberg, loc. cit. Overflow of the Lech, 1484. Werlich, p. 239.
[5] Franck von Wörd, fol. 211. a.
[6] Grafton, p. 133, and all the other chroniclers. Short, Vol. 1. p. 201, and several others, even Schnurrer, erroneously asserted this inundation to have taken place in the year 1485.

SECT. 4.-OTHER EPIDEMICS.

During the whole of this period the nations of Europe were visited with various and destructive plagues. In 1477, the Buboplague broke out in Italy, and raged without interruption till 1485. [1] It was accompanied by striking natural phenomena, among which we may reckon an enormous flight of locusts in 1478 [2] and 1482, and remarkable intercurrent diseases, such as inflammatory pain in the side, throughout the whole of Italy in 1482. [3] In Switzerland and Southern Germany malignant epidemics [4] appeared in the train of drought and famine in 1480 and 1481, while putrid fever accompanied by phrenites, [5] prevailed in Westphalia, Hesse, and Friesland. There had never been in the memory of the inhabitants of these districts so many ignes fatui as during this period. There too the people suffered from the failure of the harvest, so that it was necessary to obtain supplies from Thuringen. [6] France, where, under the fearful reign of Louis XI., oppression and misery seemed to mock the gifts of heaven, became in 1482, after a two years' scarcity, the scene of a devastating plague. It was an inflammatory fever with delirium, accompanied by such intense pain in the head that many dashed out their brains against the wall, or rushed into the water; while others, after incessantly running to and fro, died in a state of the greatest agony. According to the notion of the age, this disease was attributed to astral influences, for it could not have been brought on only by famine, which left to the poor peasantry, south of the Loire, nothing but the roots of wild herbs to support their miserable existence, [7] since the higher classes were also frequently attacked. [8] This fever was without doubt accompanied
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[1] Campo, p. 132. Pfeufer, p. 32.
[2] Franck v. Word, fol. 211. a. In the plague which followed, about 20,000 people died in Brixen, and 30,000 in Venice.
[3] Fracastor. p. 182. Morb. Contag. L. II.
[4]Wurstisen, p. 474. cap. 15. Fracastor. p. 136. Spangenberg (Pestilentz) calls this Epidemic of 1482, which spread all over Germany, Switzerland, and France, "das phrenitische, schwerhitzig Pestilentzfieber," the phrenitic, intensely ardent, plague-fever. Compare Stumpff. fol. 742. b.
[5] The so called Hauptkrankheit.

[6] Spangenberg, Mansfeld. Chr.-fol. 396. a.

[7] In many places women and children were obliged to draw the plough, from the want of draught cattle; they were obliged too to carry on the cultivation by night, that they might not be observed by the king's inhuman revenue officers.-Mezeray, Tom. II. p. 750.
[8] "Il couroit alors (1482) dans la France une dangereusc et mortelle maladie, qui affligeoit indifferemment les grands et les petits, bien qu'elle ne fut pas contagieuse. C'étoit une espèce de fièvre chaude et frenetique, qui s'allumoit tout d'un coup dans le cerveau, et le brûloit avec de si cruelles douleurs, que les uns s'en cassoient la teste contre les murailles, les autres se précipitoient dans les puits, ou se tuoient à force de courir çà et la. On en attribu la cause quelque maligne influence des astres, et à la corruption, que la mauvaise nourriture de l'année précédente avoit formé dans le corps; d'autant que les vins et les bleds n'étant peint venus à maturit, la disette avoit été si grande, principalement dans les provinces de delà la Loire, que les peuples n'avoient vécu que de racines et d'herbes." Mezeray, Tom. II. p. 746.


by inflammation of the meninges, or even of the brain itself, and was, perhaps, identical with that which at the same period desolated the north-west of Germany as far as the shores of the North Sea, only that it was heightened by the greater natural vivacity and miserable situation of the French people, who were kept in a state of perpetual dread by the cruel executions of Louis. [1] This pestilence occasioned the king to follow the advice of his morose physician [2] in ordinary, and to keep himself closely confined within the town of Plessis des Tours. It was prohibited under a heavy penalty to speak in his presence of death which was carrying off its victims in all directions, and forty crossbowmen kept guard in the fosse of the castle to put to death every living thing which might approach. [3] Two years after, in 1484, virulent diseases [4] again visited Germany and Switzerland; and thus it seemed as if the nations were everywhere threatened with death and destruction.

SECT. 5.-RICHMOND'S ARMY.

From these data, which might easily be extended, [5] it is evident that the Sweating Sickness of 1485 did not make its appearance without great and general premisory events, which for a series of years imparted to the people of England a susceptibility to dangerous and unusual diseases. If, besides this, we take into account the gloomy temperament of the English, and the general depression of their spirits, in consequence of the sanguinary wars of the red and white roses, a series of events which seems to have shaken their faith in an overruling Providence, we may readily conceive that it would require but a very slight impulse to excite
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[1] It is expressly affirmed by the historians that many of the higher classes were sleepless from the constant alarm and fear of Tristan's sword. How greatly must such a condition have predisposed the talud to receive this destructive fever!
[2] Jacques Cotier. He extorted from his patients 10,000 dollars a month, but, after his master's death, was obliged to refund to Charles VIII. 100,000 dollars. Comines,L. VI. c. 12. p. 400.

[3] Mezeray, loc. cit.
[4] Spangenberg, Mansfeld. Chron. fol. 379. a. Pestilentz, 1485.
[5] Compare Webster, T. 1. p. 147.


a powerful commotion in the mysterious mechanism of the human body. This impulse was evidently given by the landing of Richmond's army in the very year when great and portentous evils were anticipated; for on the 16th of March, the same day when Queen Ann, the unfortunate wife of Richard III., expired, a total eclipse of the sun enveloped all Europe in darkness, and gave rise to gloomy prognostications.[1] Even under ordinary circumstances, wars begat pestilential disorders-how much more inevitably must these have risen in the then existing state of affairs! Richmond's army consisted not of brave men animated by zeal to avenge their dishonoured country or to serve a good cause. It was composed of wandering freebooters, "vile landsknechte," as they were called in Germany, who assembled under his banner at Havre,-sharpshooters formed under Louis XI., who recklessly pilaged Normandy, and whom Charles VIII. gladly made over to Henry, in order to free his own peaceful territories from so great a scourge. [2] This army may not have been worse than others of the same period; [3] but cooped up as they were for a whole week in dirty ships, they doubtless carried about with them all the material for germinating the seeds of a pestilential disorder, which broke out soon after on the banks of the Severn and in the camp at Litchfield.

SECT. 6.-NATURE OF THE SWEATING SICKNESS.

PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION.

Before we proceed further, some account is here required of the nature of this disease. It was inflammatory rheumatic fever, with great disorder of the nervous system. This assumption is supported by the manner of its origin and its especial characteristic of being accompanied by a profuse and injurious perspiration.
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[1] Spangenberg, Mansfeld. Chron. fol. 398. a., and many other chroniclers. The reader will have the goodness to observe, here and in similar places, that the text is not stating the opinion of the author, but the way in which these events were viewed in that age.
[2] - Il y avoit seulement en Normandie quelque troupes de franc-archers, de ceux, que Louis XI. avoit licenciez, qui couroit la campagne: et plusieurs faineants s'étant joints avec eux, ils detruisoient tout le pais, et on devoit même craindre, que ce mal ne se communiquât aux provinces voisines. Mais il se présenta alors une belle occasion de delivrer la France de ces pillards . . . et lui donna (Charles VIII.) tout ces francs-archers et brigands de Normandie jusqu'au nombre de 3000. Mezeray,T. II. p. 762.
[3] "La milice estoit plus cruelle et plus desordonnée que jamais." So says Mezeray of the French soldiers in general. T. II. p. 750.


From the judgment that we are now capable of forming of the pernicious influences which prevailed in the year 1485, it may, without hesitation, be admitted that the humidity of that and of the preceding years affected the functions of the lungs and of the skin, and disturbed the relation of this very important tissue to the internal organs of life. This is the usual commencement of rheumatic fevers, which bear the same relation to the sweating sickness as slight symptoms bear to severe ones of the same kind. The predominance of affections of the brain and of the nerves, however, gave to the English epidemic a peculiar character. The functions of the eighth pair of nerves were violently disordered in this disease, as was shown by oppressed respiration and extreme anxiety with nausea and vomiting, symptoms to which the moderns attach much importance. [1] The stupor and profound lethargy show that there was injury of the brain, to which, in all probability, was added a stagnation of black blood in the torpid veins. We must also take into the account a previous corruption and decomposition of the blood, which, even if we should be disinclined to infer their existence from the offensive perspiration of the disease itself, were proved by striking phenomena of a similar nature that occurred in Central Europe about the same time; for the scurvy prevailed as an epidemic, more especially in Germany, in the year 1486, and with such severe and unusual symptoms, that people were inclined to regard it as a totally new malady. [2] Now such is the vital connexion of different functions that every impediment to respiration, whether in consequence of pressure from without, or through spasm and irritation of the nerves from within, or even from a morbid condition of the circulating fluid, infallibly calls forth the compensating activity of the skin, and the body becomes suffused with an alleviating perspiration.

Thus it plainly appears that the profuse perspiration in the disease of which we are treating, notwithstanding its apparently injurious tendency, was the result of a commotion excited on the part of the lungs, which was critical with respect to the disease itself; and this is in accordance with all the causes of which we still have any knowledge. Noxious and even stinking fogs penetrated

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[1] Schiller, Sect. II. c. 1. p. 131. b.
[2] Angelus, p. 253. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 398. b. The scurvy affected society far more in the 15th and 16th centuries than it does at present, and made its appearance on several occasions as an epidemic. Compare, in particular, Reusner, whose work on the history of epidemics is one of general importance. Sennert, Wier, and others.


into the organs of respiration, and as the blood was thus so much affected in its composition and in its vitality that its corrupt state was only to be obviated by profuse perspiration, the inevitable consequence was an interference with the extensive functions of the eighth pair of nerves, which interference, as later writers relate, extended in many cases to the spinal marrow, and brought on violent convulsions. [1] We have here only one essential cause, out of many, for this gigantic disease, and one too which accounts for its advance and spread. It is highly probable, for the reasons stated, and as according with all human experience, that it first broke out in the army of Henry the VIIth, and beyond all doubt that it spread from west to east, and afterwards in a retrograde course from east to west. With the perfectly equable operation of the predisposing causes, from which the diseases ought indubitably to have broken out all over England at the same time, had the condition of the atmosphere been its sole occasion, we must additionally presume a special cause for its progress through towns and villages. This, according to all appearance, was to be found in the air, impregnated with foul odours, which surrounded the sick, and abounded in the tents and dwellings in which Henry the VIIth's soldiers, after various privations and hard service, amid storms and rain were closely crowded together. Of both causes modern observation furnishes analogous examples. Intermittent fevers spread more easily in air which is contaminated by sick people, and bands of soldiers, themselves in perfect health, have not unfrequently conveyed camp fever to remote places. It signifies very little by what expressions of the schools these occurrences are designated; it is best perhaps to abstain from them altogether, for they are all inadequate and occasion misconceptions. Contemporaries, however, were certainly justified in not admitting the notion of contagion in the same sense as when the term is applied to the plague, with which they were well acquainted. [2] For very frequently cases, which were not to be explained en the principle of contagion communicated by persons diseased, occurred among people of rank, and manifestly arose independently of the usual causes. In these cases the fear of death, which everywhere was the harbinger of the disease, and threw the nerves of the chest into spasmodic
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[1] Schiller, loc. cit.
[2] It was conceived not to bee an epidemicke disease, but to proceed from a malignitie in the constitution of the aire, gathered by the predispositions of seasons: and the speedie cessation declared as much. Bacon, p. 9.


commotion, gave an impulse to the malady for which the quality of the atmosphere and luxury had long made preparation. Had this view of contemporaries been even loss impartial than it really was, it would have found. the most striking confirmation in the sudden cessation of the pestilence throughout the whole country. For the destructive spirits of air, which would not have been discerned even by the proud naturalists of the nineteenth century, dispersed and vanished for half an age in the fury of the tempest which raged on the 1st of January, 1486.

CHAPTER II.

THE SECOND VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.-1506.

"The times were rough and full of mutations and rare incidents."-Bacon.

SECT. 1.-MERCENARY TROOPS.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century, society was very differently constituted from what it was at the period when Henry the VIIth unfurled his banner for victory. The darkness of the middle ages had receded, as at the approach of a sun still hidden behind a cloud. The mind unconsciously expanded in the unwonted light of day-the whole earth was on the eve of renovation-new energies were to be called into action-events more stupendous had never occurred, nor had more creative ideas ever aroused the spirit of man. The invention of Guttenberg burst through the bonds of mental darkness, and gave to freedom of thought imperishable wings; unsuspected powers successively developed themselves; and, while in Western Europe an ardent desire arose boldly to overstep the ancient limits of human activity, the hopes of the more enlightened fell far short of the actual result of such unexpected events. The discovery of the New World, and the circumnavigation of Africa, laid the foundation for great improvements; yet the events in Centra1 Europe, though less striking to contemporaries, were in their consequences infinitely more important and beneficial. The establishment of civil order among all the nations of the West took place at this period, which forms so important a boundary between the middle ages and modern times. Regal power was fixed on a firm basis, and when the castles had fallen before the artillery of the princes and imperial cities, so that the petty feudal barons were compelled to swear obedience to the laws, an end was put to the incessant predatory feuds which had so long desolated Europe, and the establishment of internal peace was followed by the security of life and property--the first essential of refinement in manners and of the free development of human society. 

This great result of a concatenation of circumstances was not, however, brought about without violent struggles and innovations, the effects of which were felt for centuries; but it was probably the establishment of standing armies which had the greatest influence on European civilization. They became indeed the pillars of civil order, but having proceeded immediately from the pernicious mercenary system, they long nourished the seeds of unrestrained depravity, and transmitted to later generations the corruptions of the middle ages. The Lansquenets [1] (Landsknechte) of the emperor, and the mercenaries of the kings of Franco and England, who, during the war, had joined the smaller branches of the standing army, were homeless adventurers from every country in Europe, and were allured, not by military ambition, but solely by the prospect of booty. [2] In whatever country the drum beat to arms, they flocked together like swarms of locusts- no one knew from whence-and defying the feeble restraints of military discipline, indulged, during the continuance of the war, in all the unbridled licence of a predatory life.

Hence the unbounded barbarity of their mode of warfare, which was restrained only by the individual exertions of more humane commanders. There was, however, a decided contrariety between this system and the moral condition of the people of Western Europe; a contrariety which was never entirely removed by the subsequent introduction of a more strict military discipline, and which has been done away only in modern times, by the stablishment of regular armies on a system more congenial to the feelings of the people. Hence the consequences were the more pernicious, for when the armies were disbanded on the conclusion of peace, the Landsknechts dispersed in all directions, not to follow the plough again, or to resume their former occupations, but to pass their time in idleness and dissipation, if enriched by booty, and if
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[1] The name passed into the French, English, and Italian languages-Lansquenet, Lancichinecho.
[2] - "flock together like flies in summer, so that any one would wonder where all these swarms have sprung from, and how they are maintained during the winter; and truly they are such a miserable crew, that one ought rather to pity than envy the kind of life they lead and their precarious fortune." Franck's Chronicle. " On the destructive Lansquenets," fol. 217. b.


reduced to poverty by intemperance and gambling, to infest the country as mendicants or robbers, till a new war again summoned them from their dishonourable mode of life. [1] Probably but very few were ever able to rise from such deep degradation, and many fell early victims to their vices, [2] while the infection of their example brought fresh accessions from every town and village to the mercenary legions.

SECT. 2.-NEW CIRCUMSTANCES.

It is evident that in such a condition of affairs, the effect which the plague produced on civil society must have been different from that of former times. Pernicious influences which, during the middle ages, had endangered the health of the inhabitants of towns, and had often rendered disorders, naturally slight, in the highest degree malignant, were for ever removed. Under this head may be mentioned more particularly the ill-contrived construction of the houses and streets, which even yet, in large cities, destroys the comfort of the inhabitants of whole districts, and those not of the poorest class only. As people acquired confidence in the security of peace, it ceased to be necessary to protect every country town by fortifications. The walls were thrown down, the stagnant moats were filled up, and as people were no longer limited to a narrow space, they built more convenient houses in airy streets; the dark alleys and damp dwellings under ground were gradually abandoned, and a more comfortable mode of living superseded the former misery. By this means the mortality was considerably diminished, and the power of epidemics was checked; nor can it be doubted, that the better administration of the laws greatly obviated the dissolution of social ties in times of plague, and the effects of superstition and religious animosity, which had formerly been so frightful. These inestimable national improvements, however, took place but gradually, and were not a little retarded for a time by the new evil of the employment of mercenaries. For as the germs of vice were scattered in all directions by the wandering Lansquenets, so also the infection of noxious diseases found easier entrance into the towns and villages through the medium of this dissolute and widely-spread class of
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[1] 1518. "This year there was a great gathering of the Landsknechts, who, as soon as they had assembled, went forth from Friesland, committed great ravages, and made an incursion into the country at Gellern, and were beaten by Vernlow." Wintzenberger, fol. 23. a.
[2] "Not to mention too the curtailment of life, for one seldom meets with an old Landsknecht." Franck, loc. rit.


men. The Lansquenets of the sixteenth century, as spreaders of contagion, supplied the place of the former Romish pilgrims and flagellants; they even proved a more permanent scourge than those wanderers of the middle ages, who only made their appearance on extraordinary occasions. We need here only can to mind the malignant and beyond measure noisome lues which at the end of the fifteenth century spread with the rapidity of lightning over all Europe. It was not an importation from the innocent inhabitants of the New World, nor was it bred by the ill-treated Marrani, [1] the victims of the Spanish Inquisition. It was the mercenary army of Charles the VIIIth in Naples (1495), whose excesses gave to the already existing poison a malignity till then unknown, and prepared for the deeply-rooted depravity a scourge at which all the world shuddered with horror. It is, moreover, in place here to observe that, in the larger armies which the new military system now brought into the field, the ordinary camp diseases, to which another very fatal one was added, [2] were of course much more extensively propagated than in the less numerous forces of preceding centuries, and consequently that the peaceful inhabitants of the towns and of the country at large were thereby exposed to much danger.

SECT. 3.-SWEATING SICKNESS.

Meantime Europe was frequently and very severely visited by the epidemics of the middle ages, the terrors of the constantly recurring plague being borne with gloomy resignation to the inevitable evil with which, as a merited chastisement, the anger of God, according to the notion of the times, afflicted the human race. Even the English were not exempt from this fearful visitation, which, in the year 1499, carried off 30,000 people in London alone, so that the king found it advisable to retire with all his court to Calais. [3] Thus the recollection of the Sweating Sickness of 1485 was gradually obliterated. No one thought of its possible return, and all the world was occupied with other matters, when the old enemy unexpectedly again raised his head in the summer of 1506, and scared away this comfortable state of false security. The renewed eruption of the epidemic was not, on this occasion, connected with any important occurrence, so that contemporaries
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[1] Those Moors were so called who, in order to remain in Spain after the conquest of Granada, embraced Christianity.-Transl. note.
[2] The petechial fever, which will be spoken of further on.
[3] Grafton, p. 220. Webster, Vol. T. p. 149.


have not even mentioned the month in which it began to rage. Towards the autumn it had again disappeared, and as no new symptoms were added to the disease, the form of which was identified by a reference to the old descriptions, it was immediately treated by the same means, the efficacy of which those who had witnessed the epidemic of 1485 lauded with so much reason. [1] Every exposure to heat or cold was, as at that time, avoided, and the malignant fever was left to the curative powers of nature, the patient being kept moderately warm in bed; and no powerful medicines being administered. The result was beyond all expectation favourable, for in few houses did any fatal cases occur. The victory over this dreaded enemy was now, by a pardonable error, attributed more to human skill than to the mildness of the malady on this occasion, which, even under a less judicious treatment of the sick, would certainly not have been marked by any considerable degree of severity.

The disease broke out in London, but whether it penetrated to the west or not, contemporary writers, being seen convinced of its slight character, have left us no intelligence. However widely it may have spread, it certainly was confined to England, and nowhere occasioned any great mortality.

SECT. 4.-ACCOMPANYING PHENOMENA.

As the epidemic was on this occasion so very mild, it was not accompanied by any remarkable phenomena in England, but the case was otherwise in the rest of Europe, as will be proved by the following details. After a wet summer, in the year 1505, a severe winter set in. [2] Comets were seen in this as in the following year. An eruption of Vesuvius also took place in 1506, which may be mentioned, although it is well established that volcanic commotions are to be taken into account only in great pestilences, not in less extensive epidemics. In England there blew a violent storm from the south-west, from the 15th till the 26th of January, 1506, which drove the king of Castille, Philip of Austria, with his consort Johanna, from the Netherlands to Weymouth; and as, some days before, a golden eagle falling from St. Paul's church, in London, had crushed a black eagle which ornamented some lower building, evil predictions were promulgated among the people respecting

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[1] Stow, p. 809. Fabian, p. 689. Hall, p. 502. Grafton, p. 230. Holinshed, p. 536. Bacon, p. 225.
[2] Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 403. a. Pestilenz, A. 1505.

[3] Webster, Vol. 1. p. 151. Franck, fol. 219. a. Pingré, T. I. p. 481.


the fate of this son of the emperor. [1] This event, however, could not be considered as at all connected with the pestilence which broke out about half a year afterwards. More consideration is due to the gloom and anxiety which at that time depressed the spirit of the English nation. The reckless avarice of Henry the VIIth, named the English Solomon, [2] gave just ground for doubts regarding the security of property; and the pious foundations-those accustomed means of softening the dreaded wrath of Heaven, which the king, who became gradually more and more broken down by disease, established, could not efface the recollection of the arbitrary violence and extortions of his corrupt servants. [3] Although these extortions principally affected the wealthy nobility, who were much in need of restraint, yet dark mistrust was general, and all cheerfulness was banished from the minds of the people. This state of feeling might have been favourable to the propagation of the returning disease, but the genius of the year 1506 would not suffer it to be more than a slight and transient reminiscence of a mystically hidden danger, the import of which was not apparent to any medical inquirer of
the l6th century. -

SECT. 5.-PETECHIAL FEVER IN ITALY, 1505.

Thus, if we paid attention, as usual, only to the palpable occurrences which take place on the earth and beneath its surface, the Sweating Sickness of the above-mentioned year might appear to be unconnected with more considerable commotions of organic life. The powers of nature, however, are in their operations too subtle to be comprehended by our dull senses and by the coarse mechanism of our organs; nay, precisely at a time when neither the one nor the other indicate any alteration around us, those operations bring to light the most extraordinary phenomena in the human frame-that most sensitive index of secret influences on life. This observation was fully confirmed at the time .of the first return of the sweating fever. For whilst this disease remained confined to England, there appeared in the southern and central parts of Europe a new and fatal epidemic, which thenceforth
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[1] Bacon, p. 225. Stow, p. 809. Compare the other chroniclers, who most of them notice this event in great detail.
[2] Bacon, p. 231.
[3] Empson and Dudley, ministers of Henry VII., who left behind him treasure to the amount of £ l,800,000 sterling. Compare Hume, Hist. of Eng. Vol. III., Bacon, and almost all the chroniclers. Both ministers were executed in the following reign, in the year 1509. Grafton, p. 236.


visited these nations almost continually with intense malignity. This was the petechial fever, a disease unknown to the older physicians, which was first observed in 1490, in Granada, where it threatened to annihilate the army of Ferdinand the Catholic, and made great havoc also among the Saracens.[1] The bubo plague had immediately preceded it (1483, 1485, 1486, 1488, 1489, and 1490), [2] and it may with no small probability be assumed that the petechial fever had resulted from this as a peculiar variety, since in other countries also, fifteen years later, the bubo plague degenerated in various ways, and examples are not wanting in which particular forms or constituent parts of great epidemics thus branch off from them, in the same manner as, under favourable circumstances, these will combine together, and united into one destructive whole, multiply the sources of danger.

Yet some contemporaries were of opinion that the petechial fever had been brought over to Granada [3] by Venetian mercenaries from Cyprus, where they had fought against the Turks, and where this disorder was said to have been indigenous. Notwithstanding some good Works [4] already existing, this matter has need of a more thorough examination, which might bring to light important and instructive results, respecting the rise and spread of the petechial fever, and especially respecting its relation to other plagues. Whatever may be held with regard to the true origin of this fever, thus much is established, that it was at first an independent European disease, and that, at the commencement, having occupied the southern part of this quarter of the world, it then became connected, in a manner as extraordinary as it was worthy of observation, with the sweating sickness of the north; since the nearly simultaneous eruption of the sweating fever in England, with the great epidemic petechial fever in the year 1505, may be justly attributed to an influence common to both, although unquestionably of greater power in the latter.

The epidemic petechial fever, of which we are now treating, prevailed principally in Italy, and is described by Fracastoro as the first plague of this kind which ever appeared in that
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[1] Villalba, T. 1. pp. 69. 99.-Ferdinand's conflicts with the Saracens began in 1481, and ended with the fall of Granada in 1492. The disease is called in Spanish Tabardillo, which name, however, Villalba has not quoted at so early a period as 1490.
[2] Villalba, loc. cit. p. 66.
[3] Ibid. p. 69.-Fracastor. de morbis contagios. L. II. c. 6. p. 155.-Schenke von Grafenberg, L. VI. p. 553. T. II.
[4] Besides those already named, the writings of Omodei and Pfeufer. Compare Schnurrer, Book II. p. 27.


country. Of this new disease, [1] which was placed by this great physician midway between the bubo plague and the non-pestilential fever, the contagious quality showed itself from the beginning; yet it was plainly perceived, that the contagion did not take effect so quickly as in the bubo plague, that it was not conveyed so easily by means of clothing and other articles, and that physicians and attendants on the sick were the only persons who incurred much danger of infection. The fever began insidiously, and with very slight symptoms, so that the sick in general did not so much, as seek medical aid. Many persons, and even physicians among the number, suffered themselves to be deceived by this circumstance, and thus, not being aware of the danger, they hoped to effect an easy cure, and were not a little astonished at the sudden development of malignant phenomena. The heat was inconsiderable, in proportion to the fever, yet those affected felt a certain inward indisposition, a general depression of all the vital powers, and a weariness as if after great exertion. They lay upon their backs with an oppressed brain, their senses were blunted, and in most cases delirium and gloomy muttering, with bloodshot eyes, commenced from the fourth to the seventh day. The urine was usually clear and copious at the beginning, it then became red and turbid, or resembling pomegranate wine (granatwein), the pulse was slow and small, the evacuations putrid and offensive, and either on the fourth or seventh day red or purple spots, like flea-bites, or larger, or resembling lentils (lenticulae), which also gave a name to the disorder, broke out on the arms, the back, and the breast. There was either no thirst at all, or very little; the tongue was loaded, and in many cases a lethargic state came on. Others, on the contrary, suffered from sleeplessness, or from both these symptoms alternately. The disease reached its height on the seventh or on the fourteenth day, and in some cases still later. In many there existed a retention of urine with very unfavourable prognosis. Women seldom died of this fever, elderly people still more rarely, and Jews scarcely ever. Young people, on the other hand, and children died in great numbers, and especially from among the higher ranks, while the plague, en the contrary, used generally to commit its ravages only among the poorer classes. An inordinate loss of power in the commencement betokened death, as also a too violent effect from mild aperient means, and a failure in alleviation after a complete crisis. Patients were seen to die who
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[1] It was called Puncticula or Peticulae, also Febris stigmatica, Pestis petechiosa. Reusner, p. 11. For later synonimes, see Burserius, Vol. II. p. 293.


had lost to the extent of three pounds of blood from the nose. It was also a very bad sign when the spots disappeared, or broke out tardily, or were of a blackish-blue colour. Phenomena of an opposite character, on the contrary, afforded hope of recovery.

The best physicians were agreed on the importance of the petechiae as an indication of the nature of the crisis; for those cases in which they were abundant and of a good quality were cured much more easily than those in which the eruption was suppressed. An abundant perspiration also was particularly conducive to recovery, whereas all other evacuations, especially a flux from the bowels, proved to be injurious and even fatal.

If we keep these phenomena in view, and consider, moreover, that in the widely extending lues venerea of those times cutaneous eruptions predominated over the other symptoms, the English sweating sickness in the north of Europe will appear, as in connexion with this circumstance, of a very important character; and the supposition, that the morbid activity of the system during the whole of this age maintained a decided determination to the skin, may thence be fairly considered as something more than a mere conjecture.

This fact speaks for itself, but the causes of this altered temperament of the body it is not an easy matter to discover. Fracastoro, who knew much better than his modern followers how to manage his sagacious doctrine of contagion, looked for these causes in the quality of the air, which was manifest by much more evident phenomena in the epidemic petechial fever of 1528 than in that of 1505, and he traced an active connexion between this quality, which he called "infection of the atmosphere," [1] and the condition of the blood; thus indicating unknown influences by an obscure notion. He considered the altered quality of the blood according to the established views of that period, which the petechial spotted fever seemed clearly to confirm, as a putrefaction; and he even assumed that, in the non-epidemic petechial fevers, which, from the year 1505 forward, frequently occurred, isolated causes must have given rise to changes in the blood, as well as that quality of the air, to which this great physician attributed the general and continued alterations which take place in the nature of diseases.
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[1] Consimilem ergo infectionem in aere primum fuisse censendum est, quae mox in nos ingesta tale febrium genus attulerit, quae tametsi pestilentes ver non sunt, in limine tamen earum videntur esse. Analogia vero ejus contagionis ad sanguinem praecipue csse constat, quod et maculae illae, quae expelli consuevere, demonstrant, etc., p. 161.
 

The petechial fever made the same impression on the physicians of Italy as new disorders have ever made; for although they were the best in Europe, their view was bounded by the horizon of Galen, within the limits of which the novel phenomenon was not to be found. They were therefore soon perplexed, and whilst they sought to entrammels the dreaded enemy with scholastic doctrines of repletion and acrimony and occult qualities, and betook themselves first to one remedy and then to another, they exposed themselves to the derision of the people, who soon perceived their disagreement and indecision, and, as usual, charged on the whole medical profession the well-merited blame of individuals. [1]

SECT. 6.-OTHER DISEASES.

About this same period, in October, 1505, a very fatal disease broke out in Lisbon, the further progress of which was marked by the terror, the flight, and the confusion of the inhabitants. [2] Of what kind it was whether a petechial fever or a bubo plague, and what connexion it had with the pestilence in Spain which had just preceded it, it would perhaps be difficult now to ascertain. This latter pestilence had spread from Seville, following an earthquake, and violent storms of wind and rain, in 1504, and may very likely have been a bubo plague. Similar notices are met with of pestilences occurring in that country in 1506, the year of the English sweating sickness, in 1507 and 1508, in which years mention is made of swarms of locusts in the neighbourhood of Seville, and finally in 1510, the year of a great influenza, [3] and 1515. Exact descriptions, however, of these disorders are entirely wanting. [4]

With all the above phenomena, the epidemics which took place in Germany and France at the commencement of the sixteenth century, evidently unite to form a connected whole. Varying in intensity and extent, they continued without intermission for full five years, and moreover were accompanied by unusual circumstances, such as occur only in the time of great pestilences. The century was ushered in by the appearance of a comet, [5] which,
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[1] Compare the whole of the sixth and seventh chapters of Fracastor. loc. cit. What was the general judgment of the Italian physicians respecting the spotted fever, may be gathered from Nic. Massa, whose confused work, however, contributes nothing to the history of the disease. Cap. IV. fol. 67, seq. Compare Schenck von Grafenberg's excellent and very copious treatise, de febre stigmatica. L. VI. p. 553, Tom. II.
[2] Osorio, fol. 113. b., 114. a.

[3] See further on.

[4] Villalba, p. 78, et seq.

[5] Spangenberg, 141. Chr. fol. 402. a. Angelus, p. 261. Pingré, T. I. p. 479.


on this occasion, seemed to confirm the long-cherished belief that the appearance of these heavenly bodies was prognostic of evil. For mankind are in the habit of concluding that phenomena which are simultaneous must have some internal connexion, and many examples were called to mind in which great pestilences affecting the whole world had been either preceded or accompanied by comets. [1] Immediately afterwards a great murrain among cattle took place, which may have proceeded from some injurious quality in their food. A notion immediately arose that the pastures were poisoned, and of this there was so firm a conviction, that the most violent resentment, as of old, in the time of the black death, prevailed against the supposed poisoners, and in the neighbourhood of Meissen some "böse Buben" (wicked knaves) who had fallen under suspicion, were actually executed. [2]

A very considerable blight of caterpillars, which, in the north of Germany, stripped the gardens and woods far and wide of their foliage, deserves to be here mentioned as a phenomenon appertaining to the lower grades of the animal kingdom. [3] Natural history has shown that occurrences of this kind are by no means occasioned by new and wonderful influences, but rather by unusual combinations of circumstances, appearing to occur together almost accidentally, at a given time; especially by the simultaneous union of warmth and humidity in the atmosphere, whereby sometimes one and sometimes another of the lower grades of animal existences becomes extraordinarily developed. It is on this account that unusual phenomena in the insect world, whether it be the appearance or the disappearance of particular kinds, take place much more frequently when the order of succession in the seasons and the condition of the atmosphere are in a greater degree than usual and more permanently disturbed; and thus those phenomena have, with much reason, ever been considered as forerunners of pestilences, whenever the human frame has become, through atmospherical causes, generally susceptible of disease. Swarms of locusts have appeared before and during most great pestilences, and indeed the exuberant production of this insect appears, at least in Europe, to require the most unusual combination of causes.
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[1] Compare Webster, who has collected together whatever could be found on this subject. Vol. II. p. 28.
[2] Spangenberg, M. hbr. fol. 402. a.
[3] The same. Franck. fol. 219. a.

SECT. 7.-BLOOD SPOTS.

Of rarer occurrence, but quite as important in reference to the general tendencies of life, are the luxuriant growths of the minutest cryptogamic plants in the water, and on damp things of al kinds, which, from their spots of various forms and colours, produced the utmost horror both before and during great pestilences, and excited superstitious fears, as appearing to be something miraculous. These spots (signacula), and especially the blood-spots, were seen at a very early period, as for instance during the great general plague in the sixth century, [1] and again, during the plague of the years 786 [2] and 959, when it is said to have been remarked, that those on whose clothes they frequently appeared, and seemingly imparted to them a peculiar odour, were more susceptible than other people of attack from leprosy, on which account this spotted appearance was inconsiderately called the clothes leprosy [3] (Lepra vestium); not to mention other examples [4] in which plagues affecting the human species did not take place. The same signs also, in the years from 1500 to 1503, threw the faithful into great consternation, because, as on former occasions, they fancied they recognised in them the form of the cross. [5] The phenomenon on this occasion spread throughout Germany and France, and from its great extent and long duration, may be reckoned among the most remarkable of the kind. The spots were of different colours, principally red, but also white, yellow, grey, and black, and arose, often in a very short time, on the roofs of houses, on clothes, on the veils and neck handkerchiefs of women, on various household utensils, on the meat in larders, &c. A historian, who speaks also of blood-rain, [6] recounts that they could not be got rid of in less
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[1] Author's History of Medicine. Book II. p. 146.
[2] Sigebert. Gembl. fol. 58. a. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 66. b.
[3] Sigebert. Gembl. fol. 82. a. Hermann. Contract. p. 186. Witichind. p. 34.
[4] Compare on this subject Nees v. Esenbeck's Supplement to II. Brown's Miscellaneous Botanical Writings, Book 1. p. 571; and Ehrenberg's New Observations on Blood-like Appearances in Egypt, Arabia, and Siberia, together with a review and critique on what was earlier known, in Poggendorff's Annalen, 1830; the two best works on this subject; wherein is also contained a criticism on Chladni's Hypermeteorological View,.
[5] Crusius is the most circumstantial on this point, for he gives the names of many persons on whose clothes crosses were visible. On a maiden's shawl the instruments of Christ's martyrdom were supposed to have been seen marked. In the vicinity of Biberach, a miller's lad made rude sport of the painting of crosses, but he was seized and burned. Book II. p. 156.
[6] Mezeray, T. II. p. 819.


than ten or twelve days, and that they frequently occurred in closed chests, on linen and on articles of clothing. [1] Much information is not to be expected from the researches of the naturalists of those times, but there is no doubt that what is described was some one or more kinds of mould, [2] inasmuch as the whole phenomenon evidently corresponds with modern observations. Scientific physicians of the sixteenth century, among whom the naturalist George Agricola, who was born in 1494, and died in 1555, ought especially to be mentioned, recognised, even then, these spots as lichens, and without seeking to account for them by supernatural agencies, or lending credence to popular superstition, they gave them their just interpretation as indications of extensive disease. [4] Should the too bold notion of Nees v. Esenbeck, that fungi of the most minute forms have their origin in the higher regions of the firmament, and descending to the surface of the earth, produce spots and stains, be confirmed, which is not yet the case, these "signacula" would have a much more important connexion with epidemics than can be otherwise conceded to them; for though it be highly probable that they have their origin only in the dissemination of germs in the lower strata of the atmosphere, it must yet be granted, that if they appear over a considerable space, and during a long time, as at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the causes favouring their generation and spread must be ranked among those of an extraordinary kind, and on this very account may exercise an influence over human organism, as was then evident.

For so early as the fruitful year 1503, the plague, which had already appeared partially, made great advances, and France in particular was visited by so fatal a pestilence, that the inhabitants of towns and villages, in order to escape the infection, fled in bodies to the woods, and even the house-dogs became wild, which never happens, unless a country be extensively depopulated. [5] They were obliged to establish great hunts, in order to free the
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[1] Angelus, p. 261.
[2] Perhaps Sporotrichum vesicarum, or a kind of Mycoderma.
[3] Vincenzo Sette describes a kind of red mould, which in the year 1819 coloured vegetable and animal substances in the province of Padua, and excited superstitious apprehensions among the people. See his work on this subject.
[4] "Autumnali vero tempore, cum jam vestes, lintea, culcitrae, panes, omnis generis obsonia, sub dio, vel in conclavibus patentibus locata talem situ mucorem contraxerunt, qualis oritur in penore, in opacis domus cellis collocato, aut etiam in ipsis cellis aut non repurgatis, pestis preasentes ad nocendum vires habet." L. I. p. 46. Agricola's Treatise on the Plague is among the cleverest which the sixteenth century produced.
[5] For example, at the time of the Justinian Plague, and of the Black Death.


country from these new beasts of prey, and from wolves which appeared in great multitudes. [1] The dry and continued heat of the following year, 1504, having given rise to still more extensive sickness, and caused a failure in the crops, the bubo plague raged in Germany with such violence, that in some places a third part, and in others as many as half the inhabitants perished. Various kinds of fevers accompanied this overwhelming disease, among which there was one distinguished by head-ache and phrensy similar to that which appeared in France, in 1482. [2] Various putrid fevers and putrid inflammations of the lungs with bloody expectoration, are also no less plainly discernible from the accounts. [3] This diversified and general sickness throughout the whole of Germany, terminated in the cold winter of 1504-5 and the following summer, during which there was a continued murrain among cattle. It is certain, that at that time the petechial fever in Italy had not yet passed the Alps.
From all these facts it is a probable conjecture, that the sweating sickness which visited England in the year 1506, although accompanied in that country itself by no prominent circumstances, was not without connexion with the morbid commotion of human and animal life in the south and middle of Europe, and may perhaps be regarded as having been the last feeble effort of mysterious agencies
in the domain of organized being. -
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[1] Mezeray, T. II. p. 828.

[2] See above, p. 174.
[3] The former mortality was so far from having ceased, yea, rather in the great heat - (of summer) was still more vehement, that in some places a third part, and in some even the half of the people were snatched away by death, and that not by one only, but by various and hitherto unheard of diseases. Men caught the burning fever so rapidly and violently, that they thought they must be totally consumed. Some were seized with such severe and insupportable head-ache that they were deprived of their senses, some with such a violent cough that they expectorated blood incessantly-some with such a very rapid flux, that it broke their hearts the bodies of some putrefied, and were so offensive that no one could remain near them. And by reason of such extraordinary diseases, it was a most sorrowful and troublous year, and there followed a hard winter, in the which the cold lasted for three months. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 402. b. Compare Angelus, p. 263, who, following some contemporaries, mentions a comet (doubted by Pingré, I. 479) as having appeared in the year 1504.

CHAPTER III.

THE THIRD VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.-1517.

"This learned Lord, this Lord of wit and art,
This metaphysiek Lord, holds forth a Glasse.
Through which we may behold in every part
This boisterous prince."-Howell. [1]

SECT. 1 .-POVERTY.

THE ordinances of Henry the VIIIth, wich, although adapted to the times, bore hard upon the people, soon produced their fruits. The great diminished the number of their servants, and as, moreover, many of the peasantry were thrown out of employment in consequence of a conversion of large tracts of arable land into pasture, [2] the population of towns increased even to an overflow, and the consequent activity of trade gradually rendered the towns flourishing. But this change took place too rapidly. Wealth and luxury engendered, it is true, numerous wants which were a source of gain, so that the English were at this time considered luxurious and effeminate, [3] but there was a general scarcity of workmen and artists, and hence it happened, that from Genoa, Lombardy, France, Germany, and Holland, innumerable foreigners immigrated and took possession of the most lucrative branches of employment. This was a peculiar hardship on the natives, who, from their imperfect knowledge of the arts, could not compete with the more skillful foreigners, and were besides treated by them with insolence and contempt. The distresses of the poor thus increased yearly, and their indignation at length broke out. A great insurrection of the English artisans arose throughout London, and might have proved destructive to the foreigners, had affairs been in a less orderly state. The popular commotion was however suppressed without any considerable sacrifice, and Henry the VIIIth on a solemn day, appointed at Westminster, for passing judgment upon the prisoners, bestowed a pardon on them; for he saw into the causes of their discontent, and very soon after caused restrictive alien laws to be enacted. [4]
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[1] From a Poem on Henry VIII. in Herbert of Cherbury.
[2] They found grazing more profitable, and converted large tracts of arable land into pasture. Hume, T. IV. p. 277.

[3] Lemnius, fol. III. b.
[4] Grafton, p. 294. This insurrection is called by the Chroniclers, "Insurrection of Evill May-day."-Hume, T. IV. p. 274.

SECT. 2.-SWEATING SICKNESS.

All this took place in April and May of the ever memorable year 1517, and London was again indulging in hopes of better days, when the Sweating Sickness once more broke out quite unexpectedly in July, and in spite of all former experience, and the most sedulous attention, inexorably demanded its victims. On this occasion it was so violent and so rapid in its course, that it carried off those who were attacked in two or three hours, so that the first shivering fit was regarded as the announcement of certain death. It was not ushered in by any precursory symptoms. Many who were in good health at noon were numbered among the dead by the evening, and thus as great a dread was created at this new peril as ever was felt during the prevalence of the most suddenly destructive epidemic: for the thought of being snatched away from the full enjoyment of existence without any preparation, without any hope of recovery, is appalling even to the bravest, and excites secret trepidation and anguish. Among the lower classes the deaths were innumerable.' The City was more- over crowded with poor; but even the ranks of the higher classes were thinned, and no precaution averted death from their palaces. Ammonius of Lucca, a scholar of some celebrity, and in this capacity private secretary to the king, was cut off in the flower of his age, after having boasted to Sir Thomas More, only a few hours before his death, that by moderation and good management he had secured both himself and his family from the disease. [2] Also of those immediately about the king, Lords Grey and Clinton were carried off, besides many knights, officers, and courtiers. Mourning supplanted the hilarity and brilliancy of the festivals, and the king, while in miserable solitude, into which he had retired with a few followers, received message after message from
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[1] "Of the common sort they were numberless, that perished by it." Godwyn, p. 23.
[2] 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 praeterea jactavit, non admodum multi, hori 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 Universello - General Biographical Dictionary), that Ammonius died in 1517. The date of the month, however, l9th 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.


different towns and villages, announcing that in some a third, in others even half the inhabitants were swept off by this pestilence. It had never before raged with so much fatality. The minds of men had never before been so frightfully appalled. The festival of Michaelmas (29th September), which in England was always kept with much religious pomp, was of necessity postponed; nor was the solemnity of Christmas observed, for there was a dread of collecting together large assemblies of people, [1] on account of the contagion; and just about this time, when the Sweating Sickness had abated, the plague, according to the account of some historians, began, which, although probably not very virulent, prevailed during the whole winter in most English towns, and continued to keep up the distress of the people. The king on this occasion also quitted his capital, and retreated, in company with a few attendants, before the contagion, frequently shifting his court from place to place. It was during this period of trouble (11th of February, 1518) that the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen, was born. [2]

Thus the Sweating Sickness lasted full six months, reached its greatest height [3] about six weeks after its appearance, and probably spread from London over the whole of England. In Oxford and Cambridge it raged with no less violence than in the capital. Most of the inhabitants of those places were, in the course of a few days, confined to their beds, and the sciences, which then flourished, for they were never more zealously cultivated in England than at that time, suffered severe losses by the death of many able and distinguished scholars. [4] Scotland, Ireland, and all other countries beyond sea, were on this occasion spared. The neighbouring town of Calais alone was reached [5] by the pestilence; and according to later observations, it may be considered as certain, that only the English who resided there, and not the French inhabitants, were affected, as it is also ascertained that the rest of France continued throughout free from the disease. Had this not been the case, contemporary writers would undoubtedly not have omitted to make mention of so important an occurrence.
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[1] Grafton, p. 294, is very detailed. Compare Holinshed, p. 626. Baker, p. 286. Hall, p. 592.
[2] Godwyn, p. 23. Stow, p. 849.
[3] This, from the foregoing remark upon the death of Ammonius, may be concluded with the greatest probability.
[4] - "omnibus fere intra paucos dies decumbentibus, amissis plurimis, optimis atque honestissimis amicis." Th. More in Erasmus's Epist. L. VII. ep. 4. col. 386.
[5] Ibid. The only place where the disease is spoken of as having spread across the Channel.

SECT. 3.-CAUSES.

The influences which gave rise to this third eruption of the disorder among the English nation are obscure, and do not altogether correspond with those of the years 1485 and 1506. Thus it is especially remarkable that, on this occasion, there is no express mention of the humidity which had so decided a share in the origin of the two former visitations of the Sweating Sickness, and the year 1517 was in most respects one of an ordinary kind. The English Chronicles state nothing remarkable on the subject, and from those of Germany we only learn that the winter of 1516 was very mild, and that a fruitful summer with an abundant vintage [1] and a cold winter followed. The summer of 1517 was unfruitful, although not on account of wet weather, so that in some parts, especially in Swabia, provision was made against a scarcity. [2] A great comet appeared in 1516, and in 1517 an earthquake was felt at Tübingen, Nördlingen, and Calw, during a violent storm, whereupon the "Haupt Krankheit" [4] (encephalitis), accompanied by fever, became more prevalent, although not remarkably fatal. [5] This phenomenon (the earthquake) was by no means unimportant [6] in its effects, and there is reason to suppose that it was followed by subterraneous commotions of still greater extent, for earthquakes occurred also in Spain. [7] As the date of this event is specified as the 16th of June, and as earthquakes occurring in unusual localities, that is to say, in districts not volcanic, are frequently cited as prognostics of great diseases, although in volcanic districts they evidently betoken nothing of the kind, we may hence with some reason assume a telluric influence, which perhaps reached the locality of the pestilence that broke out at the beginning of July, if
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[1] Spangenberg. M. Chr. fol. 408. a.

[2] Crusius, T. II. p. 187.
[3] Wintzenberger, fol. 21. a. Angelus, p. 282. Spangenberg, loc. cit. Pingré T. 1. p. 483.
[4] 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. 174.) It frequently made its appearance throughout the whole of the sixteenth century.
[5] Crusius, T. II. p. 187.
[6] On the 16th of June, 1517, there was a great earthquake, and a tremendous storm of wind at Nördlingen, so that the parish church at St. Emeran was completely forced out of the ground and thrown down, and it was reckoned that there were 2000 houses and stables in that place which, for a space of two miles long, were overthrown and rent, and there were few houses there which were not, like the church, damaged and shaken to pieces. Wintzenberger, fol. 21. b.
[7] In Xativa. Villalba, T. I. p. 83.


not earlier. Besides, we cannot find any greater phenomenon, which, according to human conception, could have had a more unmediate connexion with the English Sweating Sickness and in this instance, too, inquiry the most circumspect does not penetrate through the thick veil which envelopes the inscrutable causes of epidemics.

SECT. 4.-HABITS OF THE ENGLISH.

That, next to the peculiar constitution which England imparts to her inhabitants, the predisposing causes of the Sweating Sickness lay in the habits of the English of those times, no one can possibly doubt. The limitation of the pestilence to England plainly indicates this. Not a single ship conveyed it to the French, or to the Dutch, who breathed a much moister atmosphere; and yet the intercourse between the English sea-ports and these immediately neighbouring nations was very frequent. Of intemperance, which most generally lays the foundation for disorders, both high and low were at this time accused. This vice of the English was proverbial in foreign countries. [1] Flesh meats highly seasoned with spices were indulged in to excess; noisy nocturnal carousings were become customary, and it was also the practice to drink strong wine [2] immediately after rising in the morning. Cyder, which in some parts, as for instance in Devonshire, is the common beverage, [3] was, even in these times, considered by medical men as injurious, for it was observed that its use caused debility with paleness, and sapped the vigour of youth in both sexes. [4] Other similar facts respecting the mode of living at that time might perhaps be adduced, from which it would appear that, owing to the total want of refinement in diet, much that was improper was employed in English cookery, and that on this account the constitution was much injured. Horticulture, which the French had already brought to a state of great improvement, [5] was still quite in its infancy in England. It is even said that Queen Catherine had pot-herbs brought from Holland for the preparation of salads, as they were not procurable in England.
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[1] "Il est saoul comme un Angloys."-Rondelet, de dign. morb. fol. 35. b.
[2] Elyot, in his "Castell of Health," quoted by Aikin, p. 64. Rondelet, loc. cit.
[3] In 1724, which was a great fruit year, there arose in this very country, from the immoderate use of cyder, an epidemic cholic; the Colica Damnoniorum. Vide Huxham, Opera. (Lips. 1764.) Tom. III. p. 54.
[4] Elyot, in Aikin, p. 63.

[5] Le Grand d'Aussy, T. I. p. 143.


Allowing that this account may not be strictly true, since it admits of other explanations, still it proves in itself what we would here enforce, and leaves us to draw conclusions from it beyond the mere fact of there being a scarcity of culinary vegetables. Much more important, however, as respects our subject, was the custom of wearing immoderately warm clothing, of which we have accounts worthy of credence. From youth upwards the head was covered with thick caps, in order to secure it from every chance of cold, and from the least draught of air; and as, by this injurious practice, the brain was subjected to a continual determination of blood, and a tenderness of the skin was induced, there was no disorder more frequent among the English in this century than catarrh, [2] which was constantly reproduced by relaxing perspirations and heating medicines. If this malady be complicated with a scorbutic habit, or if it befall persons of debauched habits, whose vessels contain nourishment not properly concocted, the preservative vital power seeks a vent through the relaxed skin, and that which in itself is a needful and alleviating excitement of this tissue becomes a disease; the wholesome excretion degenerates into a colliquative drain, which forcibly carries off with it unusual animal matters that ought not to pass away through such an outlet, and the body yields to an attack to which it has been thus long predisposed. When we consider this debilitated state of the skin as the general complaint in England, taking into account the prejudicial influence of hot baths, [3] which were much in use, and the diaphoretic medicines employed in most disorders; when we bear in mind the rare use of soap at that time, and the high price of linen, as also the extreme indigence of the lower classes, which almost always breeds pestilences, the utterly miserable condition and truly Scythian filth of the English habitations, [4] and finally, the crowded state of London in the year
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[1] Hume, T. IV. p. 273. Aikin, p. 59.
[2] "Now-a-days, if a boy of seven years of age, or a young man of twenty years, have not two caps on his head, he and his friends will think that he may not continue in health; and yet, if the inner cap be not of velvet or satin, a serving-man feareth to lose his credence." Elyot, in Aikin, p. 64.
[3] --" ubi homines perpetuo in hypocaustis degunt, multoque carnium esu se ingurgitant, et alimentis piperatis continuo utuntur. Quare factum est, ut continua hypocaustorum aestuatione meatuum cutis relaxatio consequeretur, quae sudoris promptissima et potentissima causa esse solet, cuius materia in humorum exsuperantia consistebat, quam frequens alimentorum multum nutrientium et piperatorum usus colligerat." Rondelet, loc. cit.
[4] The floors of the houses generally are made of nothing but loam, and are strewed with rushes, which being constantly put on fresh, without a removal of the old, remain lying there, in some eases for twenty years, with fish-bones, broken victuals, and other filth underneath, and impregnated with the urine of dogs and men. Erasm. Epist. L. xxii. ep. 12. col. 1140. This description is in all probability overdrawn, and applicable only to the poorest huts. It is, however, certainly not fictitious, and is not refuted by Kaye.


1517, we shall, as far as human research can penetrate, find the origin of the Sweating Sickness in this very year explicable from causes which have long been known to be capable of producing such effects. Something remains in the background, of which hereafter.

SECT. 5.-CONTAGION.

The rapid spread of the Sweating Sickness all over England as far as the Scottish borders, and across to Calais, now demands a more especial consideration. Most fevers which are produced by general causes, as well transient (epidemic), as constant and peculiar to the country (endemic), or a union of both, which almost always takes place, and was here evidently the case, propagate themselves for a time spontaneously. The exhalations of the affected become the germs of a similar decomposition in these bodies which receive them, and produce in these a like attack upon the internal organs; and thus a merely morbid phenomenon of life shows that it possesses the fundamental property of all life, that of propagating itself in an appropriate soil. On this point there is no doubt,-the phenomena which prove it have been observed from time immemorial, in an endless variety of circumstances, but always with a uniform manifestation of the fundamental law. All nations too, and from the most ancient times, have invented ingenious designations for these occurrences, which, however, seldom represent the general notion, but commonly only the peculiar propagation of individual diseases. Certainly one of the best and the most ingenious is that which is conveyed by the German word "Ansteckung," "setting on fire," which compares the exciting a disease in the appropriate body, with the inflammation of combustible matter by the application of fire, or with the kindling of powder by a spark. But how various are these "Ansteckungen!" from the purely mental, on the one hand, which, through the mere sight of a disagreeable nervous malady-through an excitement of the senses that shakes the mind, penetrates into the nerves, those channels of its will and of its feelings, and produces the same disorder in the beholder, to those, on the other hand, which propagate diseases that principally operate only upon matter, and are distinguishable but little, if at all, from animal poisons. The reader must not here expect all the features of a doctrine which extends through the whole immeasurable domain of life. They are clearly derived from the confirmed and well-applied experience of the past, and have been delineated by men [1] who had not forgotten, like their modern successors, to take a comprehensive view of epidemic diseases. It may, however, be permitted me just to call to mind the difference between those infectious diseases which are permanent and for centuries together unchangeable, and those which are temporary and transient. The infecting matter of the former may aptly be called the perfect or unchangeable in contradistinction to the imperfect or mutable character of the latter. The former, when once formed, whether in diseased persons or inanimate substances (fomites), are always in existence, and are but called into activity by those causes of general disease (epidemic constitutions) which are favourable to their propagation; and it is to be remarked that under all circumstances, and at all times, they excite the same unchangeable diseases, and, varying only in particular ramifications or degenerations and mild forms, never lose their proper essence. Examples are furnished in the small-pox, the plague, the measles, and, if we may include diseases not febrile, the leprosy, the itch, and the venereal disease. The latter, on the other hand, are not always in existence, they are called forth from nonentity, by the causes of general diseases or epidemic constitutions, and they disappear again after the extinction of the epidemic diseases by which they were bred; they likewise vary in their development and their course in each particular epidemic. Examples are found in the yellow fever, in catarrh or influenza, in nervous and putrid fever, and, among many other disorders, in miliary fever, a disease which first grew to a national pestilence in the 17th century, and which, in the kind and manner of its infecting power, approaches nearest to the sweating fever. To this latter category the English Sweating Sickness likewise belongs; a disease altogether of a temporary character, which, after its cessation, left no infecting material behind, and consequently was incapable of propagating itself after the manner of those diseases which are completely contagious. The animal matters which were expelled along with the profuse perspiration, and spread so horrible a stench around the sick, contained amid.
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[1] Fracastoro, Fernel, Valleriola, Houlier, and most of the other learned physicians of the sixteenth century.


their alkaline salts (probably ammonia in various states of cornbination), and their superabundant acid, the ferment of the disease; and this penetrated into the lungs of the bystanders as they breathed, and provided they were but predisposed for its reception, as above stated, continually produced it. It may be considered as certain that mere manual contact was not sufficient to communicate the infection, and that this was propagated, either by the pestilential atmosphere which surrounded the beds of the sick, or by exhalations generated in unclean situations where there was no vent for their escape. On this account it was that the residence at common inns and public-houses was looked upon as dangerous. [1]

I would not, however, be understood to maintain that, during the three epidemics with which, up to the present stage of our inquiry, we have become acquainted, the spread of the sweating fever alone was occasioned by infection; for if the general epidemic causes were powerful enough to excite the disease, without any previously existing poison, why might they not produce the same effect still more independently throughout the course of the pestilence, since, as is the case in all epidemics, those causes in all probability continued to increase in intensity? That the plague grew worse on the occasion of any great assemblages of the people, was at that time known, and the notion of contagion thence very naturally arose. Yet, must it here be taken into account, that even without this notion, and merely from the assemblage itself of many people in whom the like malady. was germinating, and already had shown tokens of its approach, that approach might easily be accelerated, and the disease increased among those merely slightly indisposed, by the reciprocal communication of morbid exhalations. For as the predisposition to any malady, which is an intermediate condition between that malady and the previous state of good health, [2] plainly displays the properties of the disease in those whom it threatens to attack, so these exhalations (or epidemic causes which give rise to Sweating Sickness in the first instance) certainly differ from these which occur in a sweating sickness which has already broken out, only in unessential respects, and might consequently stimulate the mere disposition to the disease more and more, even to the actual eruption of the disease itself. Yet a contagion was like

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[1] - quod tulgaria diversoria parum tuta sunt a contagio sceleratae pestis, quae nuper ab Anglis-in nostras regiones demigravit," speaking of the English Sweating Sickness in Germany (1529). Erasm. Epist. L. xxvii. ep. 16. col. 1519. c.
[2] Brown's "Opportunity."


wise in operation at the same time, which was destructive even to the temperate, and to those who were apparently in health, nay, even to foreigners, who were living in an English atmosphere and on English food, as the example of the Italian Ammonius plainly proves. [1]

In all epidemics which increase to such a degree as to become contagious, it is of importance to distinguish which of these causes are the more powerful, the predisposing or epidemic causes, which originate the proneness to the disease, or the proximate causes, among which, in the generality of cases, contagion is the most prominent. The predisposing were here evidently the more operative; contagion was not added till the disease was at its height, and although it contributed not a little to its spread, yet it always remained subordinate to the other sources of the disease, and all the matter of infection vanished without a trace, on the cessation of the disorder, so that the subsequent eruptions of it were always produced by the renewal of those general causes which are in operation upon and under the earth. It is, however, as little within the compass of human knowledge to discover the essential foundation of this renewal, as the proximate causes of the appearance of the mould spots at the commencement of the sixteenth century, or any other of those processes which are prepared and brought into activity by the hidden powers of nature.

SECT. 6.-INFLUENZAS.

Several epidemics thus originating in causes beyond human comprehension appeared in the 16th century. Among the most remarkable was a violent and extensive catarrhal fever in 1510, of that kind which the Italians call Influenza, thus recognising an inscrutable influence which affects numberless persons at the same time. It prevailed principally in France, but probably also over the rest of Europe, of which, however, the accounts do not inform us, for in these times they took little pains to record the particulars of epidemics which were not of a character to affect life. According to recent experience we should be warranted even in supposing that this malady had its origin in the remotest parts of the East. During the whole of the winter, which was very cold, violent storms of wind prevailed, and the north and middle of Italy were shaken by frequent earthquakes; whereupon there followed so general a sickness in France, that
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[1] Erasm. Epist. L. vii. ep. 4. col. 386.


we are assured by the historians that few of the inhabitants escaped it. The catarrhal symptoms, which on the appearance of disorders of this kind usually form their commencement, seem to have been quite thrown into the background by those of violent rheumatism and inflammation. The patient was first seized with giddiness and severe headache; then came on a shooting pain through the shoulders, and extending to the thighs. The loins too were affected with intolerably painful dartings, during which an inflammatory fever set in with delirium and violent excitement. In some the parotid glands became inflamed, and even the digestive organs participated in the deep-rooted malady; for those affected had, together with constant oppression at the stomach, a great loathing for all animal food, and a dislike even to wine. Among the poor as well as the rich many died, and some quite suddenly, of this strange disease, in the treatment of which the physicians shortened life not a little by their purgative treatment and phlebotomy, seeking an excuse for their ignorance in the influence of the constellations, and alleging that astral diseases were beyond the reach of human art. [1]

From this prejudicial effect of our chief antiphlogistic remedy, bleeding, as well as of evacuations from the bowels, we may conclude that the disease, though in its commencement rheumatic, yet had an essential tendency to produce relaxation and debility of the nerves, and in this respect, as well as in its extension to all classes, accorded with the modern influenzas, in which the same phenomena have manifested themselves, only much less vividly and plainly. The French, who, from the levity of their character, have always called serious things by jocose names, designate this disease "Coqueluche" (the monk's hood), because, owing to the extreme sensibility of the skin to cold and currents of air, this kind of hood was generally necessary, and was a protection against an attack of the malady, as well as against its increase. That in the accounts, which are, to be sure, very incomplete, there should be no express mention of any affection of the air-passages, is remarkable, since this could not in all likelihood have failed to exist; although it might perhaps have been only s

lightly manifested. Nearly a century before (1414), this affection appeared far more prominently on the occurrence of a no less general disorder of the same kind; so that all those who had the complaint, suffered from a considerable hoarseness, and all public
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[1] Mezeray, T. II. p. 853. Paré, p. 823. Holler, Comm. II. in secund. sect. Coac. Hippocrat. p. 323.


business in Paris was interrupted on this account. [1] It was on that very occasion that the name Coqueluche was first employed, and this having, as is well known, been transferred to the whooping-cough, it is easier to suppose, with respect to the influenza of 1510, which was similarly named, an omission in the account, than the real absence of a symptom so very generally prevalent; for in these kinds of comparisons and denominations, the common sense of the people errs much less than the learned profundity of political historians.

We must not omit here to remark that three years before (1411), and thirteen years afterwards, two diseases, entirely similar and equally general, made their appearance in France, of which we nowhere find that any notice has been taken up to the present time. The first was called Tac, the second Ladendo, which designations have since entirely gone out of use. Both were accompanied by very severe cough, so that in the former, ruptures not unfrequently occurred, and pregnant women were in consequence prematurely confined, and by the latter, from its universality, the public worship was disturbed. In the ladendo, there seems to have been an affection of the kidney of an inflammatory character, and much more severe than in the coqueluche of 1510, a memorable example of epidemic influence, and without a parallel in modern times. This pain in the kidneys, which was as severe as a fit of the stone, was followed by fever with loss of appetite, and an incessant cough that terminated in disagreeable eruptions about the mouth and nose. The disorder ran a course of about fifteen days, and was generally prevalent throughout October, being unattended with danger, notwithstanding the severity of its symptoms. One might almost be tempted to regard the tac of 1411 as the coqueluche of 1414, which is only slightly alluded to by Mezeray, and whereof the author from whom we are now quoting has made no mention; for a false date might easily occur here. Yet this must remain undecided until we can obtain fuller information, for we have experienced, even in the most recent times, an example of influenzas (1831 and 1833) following each other in quick succession. Gastric symptoms and an inordinate degree of irritability accompanied the spasmodic cough, and the complaint terminated with evacuations of blood.

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[1] "Un étrange rhûme qu'on nomma coqueluche, lequel tourmenta toute sorte de personnes, et leur rendit la voix si enrouée, que le barreau et les collèges en furent muets."-Mezeray. Compare Diderot et d'Alembert, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, etc. T. IV. p. 182.


However, the disease was unattended with danger, and lasted upon the whole only three weeks. [1]

Four other epidemics similar to that of 1510 appeared in the sixteenth century, two which were quite general in the years 1557 and 1580, and two less extensively prevalent in the years 1551 and 1564.2 Of the two former we posses accurate descriptions; it will therefore aid us in forming a correct judgment respecting the influenza of 1510, if we here take a review of these also, since the most experienced contemporaries classed all these disorders together as of a similar kind. During the dry unfavourable summer of 1557, invalids were suddenly seized with hoarseness and oppression at the chest, accompanied with a pressure on the head, and followed by shivering and such a violent cough, that they thought they should be suffocated, especially during the night. This cough was dry at first, but about the seventh day, or even later, an abundant secretion took place either of thick mucus or of thin frothy fluid. Upon this the cough somewhat abated, and the breathing became freer. During the whole course of the disorder, however, patients complained of insufferable languor, loss of strength, want of appetite, and even nausea at the sight of food, restlessness and want of sleep. The malady ended in most cases in abundant perspiration, but occasionally in diarrhoea. Rich and
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[1] Pasquier, Livr. IV. Ch. 28, p. 375, 376. The following is the passage. "En l'an 1411, y eut une autre sorte de maladie, dont une infinité de personnes furent touchez, par laquelle on perdoit le boire, le manger et le dormir, et toutefois et quantes que le malade mangeoit, il auoit une forte fievre; ce qu'il mangeoit luy sembloit amer ou puant, tousiours trembloit, et auec ce estoit si las et rompu de ses membres, que l'on ne l'osoit toucher en quelque part que ce fust: Aussi estoit ce mal accompagné d'une forte toux, qui tourmentoit son homme iour et nuit, laquelle maladie dura trois semaines entieres, sans qu'une personne en mourust. Bien est vray que par la vehemence de la toux plusieurs hommes se rompirent par les genitoires, et plusieurs femmes aocoucherent avant le terme. Et quand venoit au guerir, ils iettoient grande effusion de sang par la bouche, le nez et le fondement, sans qu'aucun médecin peust iuger dont procedoit ce mal, sinon d'une generale contagion de l'air, dont la cause leur estoit cache. Cette maladie fut appellée le Tac: et tel autrefois a souhaité par risée ou imprecation le mal du Tac à son compagnon, qui ne sçavoit pas que c'estoit. L'an 1427, vers la S. Remy (1 Oct.) cheut un autre air corrompu qui engendra unc très mauvaise maladie, que l'on appelloit Ladendo (dit un auteur de ce temps là) e n'y auoit homme ou femme, qui presque ne s'en sentist durant le temps qu'elle dura. Elk commençoit aux reins, comme si on eust en une forte gravelle, en après venoient les frissons, et estoit en bien huict ou dix iours qu'on ne pouvoit bonnement boire, ne manger, ne dormir. Après ce venoit une toux si mauvaise, que quand on estoit au Sermon, on ne pouvoit entendre ce que le Sermonateur disoit par la grande noise des tousseurs. Item elle eust une très forte durée jusques après la Toussaincts (1 Nov.) bien quinze iours ou plus. Et n'eussiez gueres veu homme ou femme qui n'eust la bouche on le nez tout esseué de grosse rongne, et s'entre-mocquoit le peuple l'un de l'autre, disant: As tu point eu Ladondo?"
[2] Reusner, p. 75.


poor, people of every occupation and of all ages, were seized with this disease in whole crowds simultaneously, and it passed easily from a single case to a whole household. On this occasion death rarely occurred, except in children who had not power to endure the severity of the cough, and medicine was of little avail, either in alleviating the disorder or arresting its destructive course. The already established name of this disease was immediately called to mind again in France. It was not, however, confined to that kingdom, but prevailed as generally, with some considerable varieties of form, in Italy, Germany, Holland, and doubtless over a still wider range of country. [1] The same was the case with the influenza of 1580, which spread over the whole of Europe, and seems to have been less severe; thus bearing a closer resemblance [2] to that of 1831 and 1833, which is still in the recollection of most of our readers from their own experience. A more elaborate research into this very important subject would far surpass the limits of this treatise, for phenomena deeply affecting the whole system of human collective life are here to be considered, which can only become apparent when received as a connected whole, yet we must at least point out the relation which the influenzas bear to the greater epidemics. This is quite apparent; for as catarrhs are not unfrequently the forerunners, accompaniments, or sequels of important diseases in individual cases, [3] excitement, of the mucous membrane being often merely an outward sign of more deeply-seated commotion, so also are influenzas usually only the first manifestations, but sometimes also the last remains of extensive epidemics. The most recent example is still fresh in our memories. The influenza of 1831 was immediately followed by
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[1] Valleriola, Loc. med. Comm. Append. p. 45. Schenck a Grafenberg, Lib. VI. p. 552. Compare Short, T. T. p. 221.
[2] Reusner, p. 72. Some of the synonymes here adduced will show the medical views of the period respecting these diseases: Catarrhus febrilis. Febris catarrhosa. Ardores suffocantes. Febris suffocativa. Catarrhus epidemicus. Tussis popularis. Cephalea catarrhosa. Cephalalgia contagiosa. Graveda anhelosa, Fernel. Der böhmische Ziep (the Bohemian pip). Der schafhusten (the sheep-cough). Die schafkrankheit (the sheep disease). Die lungensucht (phthisis). Das Hühnerweh (the poultry cough, or chicken contracted to chin-cough), and many others. In the influenza of 1580, violent perspiration was occasionally observed, so that some physicians thought that the English sweating sickness was about to return, just as in the Gröninger intermittent (1826), and in the cholera of 1831, without any knowledge on the subject, they talked of the Black Death.-Schneider, L. IV. c. 6. p. 203.
[3] That the physicians of the sixteenth century were familiar with this observation, is proved by the following quotation from Houlier. "Nulla fere corporis humani gritudo cst, qua non defluxione humoris alicuius e capite aut excitari aut incrementum accipore possit." Morb. int. L. I. fol. 68. b.


the Indian cholera, and scarcely had this, after its revival in Eastern and central Europe, vanished, when the influenza of 1833 appeared, as if to announce a general peace. After the influenza of 1510, a plague followed in the north of Europe, which in Denmark carried off the son of King John; [1] 1551 was the year of the fifth epidemic sweating sickness. In 1557, the influenza in Holland was followed by a bubo plague, which lasted the following year, and carried off  5000 of the inhabitants at Delft. [2] In 1564, a very destructive plague raged in Spain, of which 10,000 people died at Barcelona, and finally, in 1580, the last year of influenza in that century, a plague of which 40,000 died in Paris, appeared over the greater part of Europe and in Egypt. [3]

SECT. 7.-EPIDEMICS OF 1517.

We now revert to the year 1517, and shall consider the epidemics which accompanied the English sweating sickness. First of all, the Hauptkrankheit, that brain fever which so often recurred in the central parts of Europe, appeared extensively throughout Germany. Many died of this dangerous disease, and we are assured by contemporaries that other intercurreut inflammatory fevers were also very fatal. [4] Such was the case in Germany, the heart of Europe. Another disease, however, much more important, and till that time wholly unknown to medical men, appeared in Holland, which broke out in January, 1517, and from its dangerous and quite inexplicable symptoms, spread fear and horror around. It was a malignant, and, according to the assurance of a very respectable medical eye-witness, an infectious inflammation of the throat, so rapid in its course that, unless assistance were procured within the first eight hours, the patient was past all hope of recovery before the close of the day. Sudden pains in the throat, and violent oppression of the chest, especially in the region of the heart, threatened suffocation, and at length actually produced it. During the paroxysms the muscles of the throat and chest were seized with violent spasm, and there were but short intervals of alleviation before a repetition of such seizures terminated in death. Unattended by any premonitory symptoms, the disease began with a severe catarrhal affection of the chest, which speedily advanced to inflammation of the air passages, and
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[1] Hudtfeldt, Danmarka Riges Kronike.

[2] Forest, Lib. VI. Obs. IX. p. 159.
[3] Webster, vol. 1. p. 157. 165. Villalba, T. 1. p. 102. 117., and Schnurrer.
[4] Spangenberq, M. Chr. fol. 408. b.


where death did not occur on the day of the attack, ran on to a dangerous inflammation of the lungs, which followed the usual course, but was accompanied by a very high fever. Occasionally a less perilous transition into intermittent fever was observed, but in no case did a sudden recovery take place; for even when the fever subsided, the patient continued to suffer, for at least a month, from pain in the stomach and great debility, which symptoms admit of easy explanation to a medical man of the present day, from the fissures and small ulcers of the tongue, which appeared when the fever was at its height, and obstinately resisted the usual treatment.

The remedies employed show the circumspection and ability of the Dutch physicians. They had recourse, as soon as possible, at the latest within six hours, to venesection, and followed this up immediately by purgatives, of which, however, some eminent men disapproved, and this to the great detriment of their patients, for without the combined effect of both these means, the sudden suffocation could not be averted. Moreover, the employment of detergent gargles, whereby the extension of the affection to the lungs was prevented, as also of demulcent pectoral remedies, was decidedly beneficial, and it is affirmed that all who were thus treated were easily restored. [1]

Extraordinary and peculiar as this disease, for which contemporaries found no name, was, its rapid onset and its sudden disappearance were still more so. Most of those affected were taken ill at the same time, and eleven days of suffering and misery had scarcely elapsed when not another case occurred; the numbers who had fallen victims were buried; and but for the journal of the worthy Tyengius, [2] no distinct record would have existed of this remarkable epidemic, which however, it is certain, spread. further than merely over the misty territory of Holland, and apparently with still greater malignity; for in the same year we find it in Basle, where, within the space of eight months, it destroyed about 2000 people, and its symptoms would seem to have been still more strongly marked. Respecting the intermediate countries, which it is highly probable that the disease passed through from Holland before it reached Basle, we unfortunately have no information. The tongue and gullet were white as if covered with mould, the patient had an aversion to food and
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[1] Tyengius, in Forest: Lib. VI. Obs. II. Schol. p. 152.
[2] Forest availed himself of the unprinted and probably lost works of this distinguished physician, of whom, but for him, we should have known nothing.


drink, and suffered from malignant fever, accompanied with continued headache and delirium. Here also, in addition to an internal method of cure which has not been particularly detailed, the cleansing of the mouth was perceived to be an essential part of the treatment: the viscous white coating was removed every two hours, and the tongue and fauces were afterwards smeared with honey of roses, whereby patients were restored more easily than when this precaution was omitted. [2]

It appears, according to modern experience, to admit of no doubt that this disease consisted of an inflammation of the mucous membrane which, accompanied by a secretion of lymph, spread from the esophagus to the stomach, and likewise through the air passages to the lungs, being thus identical with pharyngeal croup, which was represented a few years ago as a new disease, and has in consequence been designated by a special name. [3] Its subsequent appearance in the memorable year 1557, respecting which we have a still more complete account, gives additional weight to this supposition. In that year it broke out in October, and was observed by Forest, who was himself the subject of it, at Alkmaar, where it attacked whole families, and in the course of a few weeks destroyed more than 200 people. It was not, however, so excessively rapid in its course as in 1517, but began with a slight fever like a common catarrh, and showed its great malignity only by degrees. Sudden fits of suffocation then came on, and the pain of the chest was so dreadfully distressing that the sufferers imagined they must die in the paroxysm. The complaint was increased still more by a tight convulsive cough, and until this was relieved by a secretion of mucus, proved dangerous, especially to pregnant women, sixteen of whom died within the space of eight days, whilst those who survived were all prematurely brought to bed. The fever which accompanied the inflammation was very various in its course. It was rarely observed to continue without intermission, but where this was the case, was
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[1] The moderns, who prefer powerful remedies, employ for this purpose, without any better effect, the lunar caustic.
[2] Wurstisen, p. 707. In this seventeenth year there arose an unknown epidemic. The patients' tongues and gullets were white, as if coated with mould; they could neither eat nor drink, but suffered from headache together with a pestilential fever which rendered them delirious. By this disease 2000 persons perished in Basle within the space of eight months. Besides other means, it was found very efficacious to cleanse the mouth and gullet every two hours, even to the extent of making the surface blood, and then to soften them with honey of roses.
[3] Bretonneau's, Diphtheritis. Compare Naumaun's treatise on the subject in the author's Wissenschaftlichen Annalen der ges. Heilkunde, Vol. XXV. II. 3. p. 271.


attended with the greatest peril. Yet death did not take piece on this visitation until the ninth or fourteenth day, whereas in the year 1517 as many hours would have sufficed to produce a fatal termination. After this period the danger diminished, and those patients were most secure from suffocation, provided they had good medical attendance, whose complaint had been accompanied throughout its course by fever of only an intermittent character. So marked was the influence of the Dutch soil, that until this intermittent passed into continued fever of different gradations, it appeared of the purest and most unmixed type. In these cases the inflammation was less completely formed, so that even bleeding, a remedy otherwise indispensable, was sometimes unnecessary. These affected all suffered most at night and in the morning, the latter generally bringing with it the inflammation of the larynx and trachea, which, however, they had not at that time experience enough to recognise as such, perceiving as they did only a slight redness in the fauces. The painful affection of the stomach was also in this epidemic very distinctly marked, so that a sense of pressure at the praecordia, accompanied by continual acid eructations, continued to exist even after a succession of six or seven fits of fever; and convalescents were troubled for a long time with dyspepsia, debility, and hypochondriasis. The inflammation of the mucous membrane, no doubt, affected the nervous plexuses of the abdomen, as is usually the case, and totally changed the secretion. This was proved by the treatment, for, by administering the necessary purgative remedies, a vast quantity of offensive mucus, mixed with bile, was evacuated.

Our excellent eye-witness assures us that the people sickened as suddenly as if they had inhaled a poisonous blast, so that more than a thousand people in Alkmaar betook themselves to their beds in a single day, a thick stinking mist having previously for several days spread over the land. This pestilence did not terminate so speedily as that of the year 1517; on the contrary, is delayed until the winter, and seems to have formed the conclusion of a whole series of morbid phenomena, particularly of the already mentioned influenza throughout Europe, and of the bubo plague in Holland, which had occurred in the middle of the summer,- phenomena that were accompanied by the usual attendants of epidemics, namely, great scarcity, and unusual occurrences in the atmosphere, such, for instance, as electric illuminations of prominent objects, and so forth. [1]
___________________________________________

[1] Forest. Lib. VI. obs. ix. p. 159.


The close connexion between this inflammation of the air-passages and gullet and the epidemic catarrh is quite apparent; for these are but gradations and gradual transitions in the affection of the mucous membrane, as also in the power of atmospherical causes, which especially influence the organs of respiration. We believe, therefore, that we are fully justified in classing the epidemic described to have taken place in Holland and Germany in 1517, with the influenzas; and in declaring the morbid commotion in human collective life which thus manifested itself, to have been a forerunner of the English pestilence, which was simultaneously prepared by the altered condition of the atmosphere, and broke out a few months later.

We ought not to omit here to mention that, in this same year, 1517, the small-pox, and with it, as field-poppies among corn, the measles, was conveyed by Europeans to Hispaniola, and committed dreadful ravages at that time, as afterwards, among the unfortunate inhabitants. Whether the eruption of these infectious diseases in the New World was favoured by an epidemic influence or not, can no longer be ascertained ; yet the affirmative seems probable from the fact, that the small-pox did not commit its greatest ravages in Hispaniola [1] until the following year, and, according to recent experience, those epidemic influences which extend from Europe westward, always require some time to reach the eastern coasts of America.

But even without this phenomenon in the New World, which is now for the first time placed within the pale of observations on epidemics, we have facts at hand sufficiently numerous and worthy of credit to prove-that the English Sweating Sickness of 1517 made its appearance, not alone, but surrounded by a whole group of epidemics, and that these were called forth by general morbific influences of an unknown nature.
___________________________________________

[1] Petr. Martyr. Dec. IV. cap. 10. p. 321. Compare Moore, p. 106.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FOURTH VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.-1528, 1529.

Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär',
Und wollten uns verschlingen;
So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr,
Es soll uns doch gelingen! "-LUTHER.

SECT. 1.-DESTRUCTION OF THE FRENCH ARMY BEFORE NAPLES, 1528.

THE events to which we are now about to allude, demonstrate, by their surprising course; that the fate of nations is at times far more dependent on the laws of physical life than on the will of potentates or the collective efforts of human action, and that these prove utterly impotent when opposed to the unfettered powers of nature. These powers,. inscrutable in their dominion, destructive in their effects, stay the course of events, baffle the grandest plans, paralyse the boldest flights of the mind, and when victory seemed within their grasp, have often annihilated embattled hosts with the flaming sword of the angel of death.

To obliterate the disgrace of Pavia, [1] Francis I., in league with England, Switzerland, Rome, Genoa, and Venice against the too powerful Emperor of Germany, sent a fine army into Italy. The emperor's troops gave way wherever the French plumes appeared, and victory seemed faithful only to the banners of France and to the military experience of a tried leader. [2] Everything promised a glorious issue; Naples alone, weakly defended by German lansquenets and Spaniards, [8] remained still to be vanquished. The siege was opened on the lst of May, 1528, and the general confidently pledged his honour for the conquest of this strong city, which had once been so destructive to the French. [4] It was easy with an army of 30,000 veteran warriors [5] to overpower the imperialists; and a small body of English [6] seemed to have come merely to partake in the festivals after the expected victory. The city too suffered from a scarcity, for it was blockaded by Doria, with his Genoese galleys; and water, fit to drink, failed after Lautrec had turned off the aqueducts of Poggio reale; so that the
___________________________________________

[1] 24th of Feb. 1525.

[2] Lautrec.
[3] At first under Hugo de Moncada; afterwards under the Prince of Orange.
[4] 1495, the year of the epidemic Lues.
[5] Among them some regiments of Swiss.
[6] Two hundred knights under Sir Rober Jerningham, and afterwards under Carew: both died of the Camp Fever. Herbert of Cherbury, p. 212. seq.


plague, which had never entirely ceased among the Germans since the sacking of Rome, [1] began to spread.

But amidst this confidence in the success of the French arms, the means for ensuring it were gradually neglected. The valour of the intrepid and prudent commander was doubtless equal to the minor vicissitudes of war, but whilst the length of the delay paralysed the activity, nature herself suddenly proved fatal to this hitherto victorious army; pestilences began to rage among the troops, and human courage could no longer withstand the "far-shooting arrows of the god of day." The consequence was, that within the space of seven weeks, out of the whole host which up to that period had been eager for combat, a mere handful remained, consisting of a few thousands of cadaverous figures, who were almost incapable of bearing arms or of following the commands of their sick leaders. On the 29th of August the siege was raised, fifteen days after the heroic Lautrec, bowed down by chagrin and disease, had resigned his breath; the wreck of the army retreated amid thunder and heavy rain, [2] and were soon captured by the imperialists, so that but few of them ever saw their native land again.

This siege brought still greater misery upon France than even the fatal battle of Pavia, for about 5000 of the French nobility, some from the most distinguished families, had perished under the walls of Naples; its remoter consequences too were humiliating to the king and the people; since owing to its failure all those hitherto feasible schemes were blighted, which had for their object the establishment of French dominion beyond the Alps. It behoves us, therefore, to pay so much the more attention to those essential causes of this event, which fall within the province of medical research.

The mortality which occurred in the camp began probably as early as June, after the usual calamities which surround an army in an enemy's country. The French and Swiss were insatiable in their indulgence in fruit, which the gardens and fields furnished them in abundance, whilst there was a scarcity of bread and of other proper food. [3] Hence fevers soon broke out, which increased in malignity the longer they existed, accompanied no doubt by debilitating diarrhoeas, which never fail to make their appearance under circumstances of this kind, and are in themselves among the most pernicious of camp diseases, since they not only destroy

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[1] The 6th of May, 1527.
[2] Jovius, L. XXVI. Tom. II. p. 129.

[3] Ibid. p. 114.


in the individual case by the exhaustion which they occasion, but likewise, by infecting the air, prepare the way for the worst pestilences.

These diseases were, however, little noticed, and there was consequently no attempt made to diminish their causes. It became daily more and more apparent, that the cutting off of the sources near Poggio reale, which Lautrec had commanded, in order to compel the besieged to a more speedy surrender, was in the highest degree injurious to the besiegers themselves; for the water, having now no outlet, spread over the plain where the camp was situated, which it converted into a swamp, whence it rose, morning and evening, in the form of thick fogs. From this cause, and while a southerly wind continued to prevail, the sickness soon became general. Those soldiers, who were not already confined to bed in their tents, were seen with pallid visages, swelled legs, and bloated bellies, scarcely able to crawl; so that, weary of nightly watching, they were often plundered by the marauding Neapolitans. The great mortality did not commence until about the 15th of July, but so dreadful was its ravages, that about three weeks were sufficient to complete the almost entire destruction of the army. [1] Around and within the tents vacated by the death of their inmates, noxious weeds sprang up. Thousands perished without help, either in a state of stupor, or in the raving delirium of fever. [2] In the entrenchments, in the tents, and wherever death had overtaken his victims, there unburied corpses lay, and the dead that were interred, swollen with putridity, burst their shallow graves, and spread a poisonous stench far and wide over the camp. There was no longer any thought of order or military discipline, and many of the commanders and captains were either sick themselves, or had fled to the neighbouring towns, in order to avoid the contagion. [3]

The glory of the French arms was departed, and her proud banners cowered beneath an unhallowed spectre. Meanwhile, the pestilence broke out among the Venetian galleys under Pietro Lando. Doria had already gone over to the Emperor, [4] and thus
___________________________________________

[1] According to Mezeray, the pestilence was at its height at the end of July. This is in accordance with Jovius, who fixes the termination of the great mortality, with rather too much precision perhaps, on the 7th of August.
[2] With reference to this seemingly inflammatory state of excitement, it is, perhaps, worthy of notice, that the commander-in-chief himself is stated to have been twice bled. Jovius, loc. cit. p. 125.
[3] Jovius, loc. cit. p. 116-118.
[4] Mezeray, T. II. p. 963.


was this expedition, begun under the most favourable auspices, frustrated on every side by the malignant influence of the season.

No medical contemporary has described the nature of this violent disease, and historians have on this point preserved only general outlines, which do not afford sufficient materials to ground an investigation. Certain it is, that in the year 1528, a very malignant petechial fever extended throughout Italy, and in the proper sense of the word prevailed so decidedly, that it even followed the Italians abroad in the same way as the Sweating Sickness did the English, as is proved by the case of the learned Venetian Naugerio, who, being despatched on an embassy to Francis the 1st, died at Blois on the Loire, of this very disease, with which the French had yet no acquaintance.[1] Contemporaries assure us, that this epidemic committed great ravages in the country, already distracted by wars and feuds, and it is therefore hardly to be doubted, that, occurring as it did in those same years, it was the disease of which we have been treating, the malignity of which was increased on extraordinary occasions. A pestilence which, just before the siege of Naples, destroyed one-third of the inhabitants of Cremona, was in all probability the petechial fever. [2] Yet, here and there, the old bubo plague made is appearance. This it was which in the year 1524 carried off 50,000 people in Milan, [3] and this appears likewise to have been the disease which, after the sacking of Rome, broke out among the German lansquenets, and in a short time annihilated two-third of these troops. Contemporaries saw therein God's just punishment of their desecration of the Holy See, for in the succeeding years, all the remaining participators in the storming of the eternal city also met with an end worthy of their crimes. [4] They did not take into account, however, the beastly intemperance and excesses of the soldiery, whose eagerness after plunder led them to encounter the plague poison in the most secret holes and corners; nor did they reflect, that the plague penetrated he Castle of St. Angelo itself, and destroyed some of the courtiers almost under the eyes of the Pope. [5] Of these lansquenets, many went to Naples in the following year under the Prince of Orange, and it may with good
___________________________________________

[1] Fracastor. Morb. Contag. L. II. c. 6. p. 155, 156.
[2] It broke out in the beginning of February, and prevailed throughout the following month. Campo, p. 151.
[3] Guicciardini, p. 1054.

[4] Mezeray, T. II. p. 957.
[5] Guicciardini, p. 1276.


to that city fresh germs of plague; to which may be added, the by no means incredible story, that the besieged sent infected and sick soldiers to the French, in order to cause poisonous pestilences to break out among them. [1] This very circumstance tells in favour of bubo plague, for the decided certainty of its contagious nature was known, and seemed beyond all comparison greater than the more conditional communicability of the new disease. [2] Moreover, the same attempt at impestation had been already often made in earlier times.

It is, however, also to be considered, on the other side, that the French army was more exposed to the epidemic influence of the air, the water, and the general powers of nature, than any other assemblage of men, and, that this influence was probably more powerful in the year 1529, than at any other time during the sixteenth century. The formation of fog in the heat of summer is at all times an extraordinary phenomenon, [3] which decidedly indicates a disproportion in the mutual action of the components and powers of the lower strata of the atmosphere. This was not dependent merely on the local peculiarities of Naples, for during the summer of 1528, grey fogs were observed throughout Italy, which rendered the unwholesome quality of the air visible to the eye. [4] This was increased by the prevalence of southerly winds, which are always, in Italy, prejudicial to health, as also by the thousand privations of a camp, so that a disease which was already prevalent all over Italy-we allude to the petechial fever-might well break out on the damp soil of Poggio reale. In the history of national diseases, we find a moral proof of the predominance of epidemic influence, which plainly and intelligibly manifests itself under the greatest, variety of circumstances. This is a belief, that the water and even the air is poisoned. [5] Nor is this proof wanting in the deplorable history of the French army before Naples, for it was generally believed, that some Spaniards of Moorish descent, to whom was attributed an especial degree of skill in the management of poison, and some Jews from Germany, who, for the sake of gain, had followed the lansquenete to truckle for their booty, had stolen out of the
___________________________________________

[1] Guicciardini, p. 1315.
[2] See above, p. 186.
[3] It was also observed, as is well known, in the summer of 1831, before the breaking out of the cholera.
[4] Gratiol, p. 129, 130.

[5] See above, p. 189.


city under cover of the night, in order to poison the water in the neighbourhood of the camp. [1] It was also surmised, that an Italian apothecary had administered to the French knights poison in their medicine. [2] We will not anticipate on this occasion the researches of naturalists, whose experiments on air and water, during important epidemics, have not yet led to any results; it is, however, not improbable that pond and spring water, under such circumstances as are here described to have occurred, might become impregnated with a noxious quality, not inherent in it, which would very naturally give rise to the belief that a poison had been thrown into it. On the whole, this accusation may certainly be judged according to the same views which have been stated in our treatise on the Black Death.

From all these circumstances, the notion is highly probable that it was the petechial fever which raged in the French camp; and if we may attach any importance to the incidental accounts of historians, it may perhaps be to the purpose to state that Prudencio de Sandoval, who has written from authentic materials, calls the disease "las bubas." This name, it is true, presupposes a rather strange confusion of petechial fever with lues; and, indeed, the diseases among the French troops from 1495 to 1528, have been oddly jumbled together by Sandoval. It shows, however, that there still existed a recollection of the prevalent eruptions which occurred in the pestilence of 1528; and, therefore, this whole account might perhaps be the more justly applied to petechial fever, as this same historian states, that the French called the disease after the village of Poggio reale "les Poches," [4] by which name the well-known bubo plague would hardly have been designated. If, however, we choose to suppose that at one and the same time different diseases prevailed in the French army, this notion is not only supported by the express testimony of a contemporary, [5] but also by many observations ancient and modern, [6] that have been made in cases where the circumstances
___________________________________________

[1] Jovius, loc. cit. p. 118.

[2] Mezeray, p. 903.
[3] The Spanish name for the lues venerea, which it obtained in consequence of the prevailing eruptions. It corresponds with the French "la vérole," and with the German "französische Pocken." We must not, therefore, think that it means "buboes." Sandoval, Part II. pp. 12. 14. Compare.Astruc, T. I. p. 4.
[4] In the Madrid edition of the same work, 1675. fol. L. XVII. p. 232. b.
[5] "Auster uamque ventus per eos dies perflare et mortiferum crassioris nebulae vaporem ex palustri ortum uligine, per castra dissipare et circumferre ita coeperat, ut aliis ex causis conceptae febres in contagiosum morbum verterentur." Jovius, L. XXVI. p. 127.
[6] In Torgau, where, in 1813 and 1814, 30,000 Frenchmen found their graves, there prevailed two diseases, typhus and diarrhoea, altogether distinct from one another. See Richter.


have been similar to those which then prevailed. It is ever to be regretted that there was no intelligent Machaon to be found in the camp before Naples; such a one would undoubtedly have left us some pithy observations on the combination and affinity of petechial fever and bubo plague.

SECT. 2.-TROUSSE-GALANT IN FRANCE.-1528, AND THE FOLLOWING YEARS.

Deeply as the irreparable loss of such an army was felt by the French, yet were they destined to suffer still greater misfortunes at home. The dark power which threatened all Europe regarded neither distance nor limits. It seized on the French nation in their own country, whilst their military youth were destroyed before Naples. The cold spring and wet summer of 1528 destroyed the growing corn, [1] and a famine was thus produced throughout France, even more grievous, on account of its duration, than the period of scarcity in the time of Louis the XIth, [2] for the failure of the harvest continued for five years in succession, during which all order of the seasons seemed to have ceased. A damp summer heat prevailed in autumn and winter, a frost of a single day only occasionally intervening. The summer, on the other hand, was cloudy, damp, and ungenial. The length of the days alone distinguished one month from another. It appears plainly from detached accounts how much the usual course of vegetation was disturbed. Scarcely had the fruit trees shed their leaves in the autumn when they began to bud again, and to bear fruitless blossoms. No returns rewarded the toil of the husbandman, and the longed-for harvest again and again deceived the hopes of the people. Thus, even during the first of these calamitous years, the distress became general, and the increasing indigence was no longer to be checked by human aid. Bands of beggars wandered over the country in lamentable procession. The bonds of civil order became more and more relaxed, and people soon had to fear not only robbery and plunder on the part of these unfortunate beings, but the contagion of a pestilence, the offspring of their distress, which followed in their train.

This disease was a new production of the French soil, and when it spread generally throughout the country, was the more

___________________________________________
[1] Schwelin, p. 143.

[2] See page 174.


sensibly felt, as it especially carried off young and robust men; on which account it was designated by the very significant name of Trousse-Galant. [1] It consisted of a highly inflammatory foyer, which destroyed its victims in a very short time, even within the space of a few hours; or if they escaped with their lives, deprived them. of their hair and nails, and from a long-continued disinclination for all animal food, left behind it, as sequelae, a protracted debility and diseases which endangered the recovery of the sick, whose constitutions were already so much shaken. Hence it appears that this fever was combined with a great decomposition of the fluids, and a very morbid condition of the functions of the bowels, not to mention the effects produced by continued hunger, which contemporaries paint in the most dreadful colours.

The stock of provisions was already so far consumed in the first year that people made bread of acorns, and sought with avidity all kinds of harmless roots, merely to appease hunger. These miserable sufferers wandered about, houseless and more like corpses than living beings, and finally, failing even to excite commiseration, perished on dunghills or in out-houses. The larger towns shut their gates against them, and the various charitable institutions proved, of necessity, insufficient to afford relief in this frightful extremity! It was the lot of very few to obtain the tender care and attendance of the Sisters of Charity. In most of those affected their livid swollen countenances, and the dropsical swelling of their limbs, betrayed the sickly condition in which they dragged on their languishing existence. Every one fled from these pestiferous spectres, for they were saturated with the poison of this deadly disease, and the remark was no doubt made a thousand times over, that this poison might be conveyed to persons in health without affecting the carrier, since want and ill health occasionally afford a miserable protection against disease of this kind. [2]

The necessary data for furnishing a complete account of the Trousse-galant of 1528 do not exist, for physicians passed over this epidemic with the same coolness and indifference which unfortunately they may be justly accused of having shown with respect to other important phenomena. But it returned once again in 1545-46, appearing in Savoy and over a great part of France; and we possess from Paré, [3] and from Sander, a Flemish
___________________________________________

[1] Trousser, in an obsolete sense, signifies to cause speedy death.
[2] Mezeray, T. II. p. 965, where the best notices of it are to be found.
[3] His account applies to the town of Puy in the Auvergne, where he seems himself to have seen the disease. Livr. XXII. c. 5. p. 823.


physician, [1] though still a defective, yet a more satisfactory, description of its symptoms on this occasion. Its course was, as before, very rapid, so that it destroyed the patient in two or three days; again it attacked the strong rather than the weak, as if in justification of its old name, and those who recovered remained for a long time distinguishable by the loss of their hair and their wretched appearance. Patients felt at the commencement an insufferable weight in the body, with extremely violent headache, which soon deprived them of all consciousness, and passed into a profound stupor, even the sphincter muscles losing their power. In other cases a continued state of sleeplessness was followed by feverish delirium, so violent that it was necessary to have recourse to means of restraint. Such opposite states are usual in all typhous fevers. Sander expressly mentions that in most of those affected, eruptions made their appearance. He does not, however, state their nature or describe the course and crisis of the disease, otherwise than that it terminated about the fourth or the eleventh day. Even the eruptions that did appear, which were probably petechia, and perhaps also (rother friesel) red miliary vesicles, came at an indefinite period; either at the commencement, when they afforded an unfavourable prognosis, or later, when they betokened a favourable crisis. Thread-worms, in great numbers, were evacuated alive under great torment, and generally increased the sufferings of the patient. The disease was scarcely less contagious than plague, and with respect to its treatment, bleeding, copious and even ad deliquium, was decidedly successful, which, coupled with the attacks on the head just described, [2] leads to the conclusion that there existed a fulness of blood and an inflammatory state of circulation, together, perhaps, with inflammation of the brain. We must not omit to observe that, during the pestilence of 1546, the bubo plague made its appearance here and there, especially in the Netherlands; [3] and in the following year, broke out and spread to a greater extent in France, [4] whence it seems to follow, with respect to the malady of which we are now treating, that its nature resembled the petechial fever, since that disease usually precedes the occurrence of pestilences. [5]
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[1] Forest. L. VI. obs. 7. p. 156. Sander writes from numerous observations which he made in and about Cambray.
[2] Sauvages, T. I. p. 487, hence calls the Trousse-galant "Cephalitis verminosa," although neither inflammation of the brain nor worms existed in all cases, and takes his description from Sander, as again Ozanam has taken it from Sauvages, T. III. p. 27.
[3] Forest. p. 157. Schol.

[4] Paré, loc. cit.
[5] So small-pox and measles, it is well known, are the forerunners of plague.


The assertion of historians, that in 1528, and the following years, France lost a fourth part of her inhabitants by famine and pestilence, seems according to our representation, not to be by any means exaggerated. The consequences, as regarded the future destinies of that country, were likewise very important. For Francis the 1st saw that no new sacrifices could be borne by his people, who were already so sorely afflicted; and therefore abandoned his schemes of greatness and foreign power, consenting, on the 5th of August, 1529, to the disadvantageous treaty of Cambray.

SECT. 3.-SWEATING SICKNESS IN ENGLAND, 1528.

Whoever, following the above facts, will represent to himself the state of Europe in 1528, will readily believe that a poisonous atmosphere enveloped this quarter of the globe, and continually brought destruction and death over its nations. Ruin broke in upon them in a thousand forms, destroying their bodies and benighting their minds, and if to this we add the discord and the deadly party hatred which at that time prevailed in the world, it seems as if every circumstance that could affect mankind was implicated in this gigantic conflict, which threatened in its fatal result to annihilate all traces of the times that were past.

A heavier affliction than has yet been described was in store for England: for in the latter end of May, the Sweating Fever broke out there in the midst of the most populous part of the capital, spreading rapidly over the whole kingdom; and fourteen months later, brought a scene of horror upon all the nations of northern Europe, scarcely equalled during any other epidemic. It appeared at once with the same intensity as it had shown eleven years before, was ushered in by no previous indications, and between health and death there lay but a brief term of five or six hours. Public business was postponed: the courts were closed, and four weeks after the pestilence broke out, the festival of St. John [1] was stopped, to the great sorrow of the people, who certainly would not have dispensed with its celebration had they recovered from the consternation arising from the great mortality. The king's court was again deserted, and to the various passions and mental emotions which had been clashing there since the year 1517, as, for instance, those arising from the theological zeal which had been excited by Henry VIIIth's defence of the faith, was added once more the
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[1] Fabian, p. 699.


old alarm and distress, which seemed to be justified by the death of some favoured courtiers; particularly of two chamberlains, [1] and of Sir Francis Poynes, who had just returned from an embassy to Spain. The king left London immediately, and endeavoured to avoid the epidemic by continually travelling, until at last he grew tired of so unsettled a life, and determined to await his destiny at Tytynhangar. Here, with his first wife and a few confidants, he resided quietly, apart from the world, surrounded by fires for the purification of the air, and guarded by the precautions of his physician, who had the satisfaction to find that the pestilence kept aloof from this lonely residence. [2]

How many lives were lost in this, which some historians have called the great mortality, can be estimated only by the facts which have been stated, and which betoken an uncommonly violent degree of agitation in men's minds. Accurate data are altogether wanting, yet it is quite evident that the whole English nation, from the monarch to the meanest peasant, was impressed with a feeling of alarm at the uncertainty of life, to which neither the rude state of society, nor a constant familiarity with the effects of laws written in blood, [3] had blunted their sensibility. Such a state does not exist without very numerous cases of mortality which bring the danger home to every individual, so that it is to be presumed that the churchyards were everywhere abundantly filled. Nor did this destructive epidemic come alone. Provisions were scarce and dear, and whilst hundreds of thousands lay stretched upon the bed of death, many perished with hunger, [4] and the same scenes would have been experienced as in France, had not the corn trade afforded some relief. [5]

As soon as the occurrences of this unfortunate year could be more closely surveyed, a conviction was at once felt, that it was one and the same general cause of disease which called forth the poisonous pestilence in the French camp before Naples, the putrid fever among the youth in France, and the sweating sickness in England, and that the varying nature of these diseases depended only on the conditions of the soil and the qualities of the atmosphere in the
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[1] Sir William Compton and William Carew, besides many other distinguished persons who are not named.
[2] Graflon, p. 412, the principal passage. Compare Holinshed, p. 735. Baker, p. 293. Hall, p. 750. Herbert of Cherbury, p. 215.
[3] During Henry the Eighth's reign (1509 to 1547) 72,000 malefactors were, according to Harrison, executed for theft and robbery, making nearly 2000 for each year. Hume, T. IV. p. 275.
[4] Stow, p. 885.

[5] Fabian, loc. cit.
 

countries which were visited. [1] If, in opposition to these notions, a narrow view of human life in the aggregate should raise a doubt, this would be strikingly refuted by the wonderful coincidence, in point of time, of all these phenomena, occurring in such various parts of Europe; for while the French army, after an exposure of four weeks to the miseries and poisonous vapours of its camp before Naples, perceived the first forebodings of its destruction, the great famine with the Trousse-galant in its train was in full advance on the other side the Alps, and almost on the same day the Sweating Sickness broke out upon the Thames.

SECT. 4.-NATURAL OCCURRENCES.-PROGNOSTICS.

The chronicles of all the nations of Europe are full of remarkable notices respecting the commotions of nature in these particular years, which were so utterly hostile to the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In England the period of distress was already approaching; towards the end of the year 1527. Throughout the whole winter (November and December, 1527, and January, 1528), heavy rains deluged the country, the rivers overflowed their banks, and the winter seed was thus rotted. The weather then remained dry until April; but scarcely was the summer seed sown, when the rain again set in, and continued day and night for full eight weeks, so that the last hope of a harvest was now destroyed, [2] and the soaked earth, in the thick mists that arose from its surface, hatched the well-known demon of the Sweating Disease. It was now of no avail that the torrents of rain ceased, for the softened soil gave the pestilence constant nourishment, and the damp warmth which, alternating with unseasonable cold, remained prevalent during the following years all over Europe, rendered men's bodies more and more susceptible to severe diseases.

The historians of that time were too much occupied with the intricate affairs of the court and of the church to devote any attention to nature, and on this account they have left us no satisfactory information of the state of the weather and the course of the seasons of those years in England, yet there is no reason to suppose that they were essentially different from those of the rest of Europe. This may be proved by the following collection of important natural occurrences, when taken in conjunction with the circumstances already stated respecting France and Italy.
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[1] -"it seeming to be but the same contagion of the aire, varied according to the clime." Herbert of Cherbury, loc. cit.

[2] Stow, loc. cit.


In Upper Italy such considerable floods occurred in all the river districts, in the year 1527, that the astrologers announced a new Deluge. There was a repetition of them to an equal extent, and with equal damage, in the following year, so that it may have been concluded, not without some ground, that there was an accumulation of snow on the highest mountain ranges of Europe. On the third of July, 1529, there followed a violent earthquake in Upper Italy, and immediately afterwards a blood-rain, as it was called, in Cremona.[1]

In October, 1530, the Tiber rose so much above its banks that in Rome and its neighbourhood about 12,000 people were drowned. A month later, in the Netherlands, the sea broke through the dykes, and Holland, Zealand, and Brabant suffered very considerably from the overflow of the waters, which again took place two years afterwards. [2]

In 1528 there appeared in the March of Brandenburg, during the prevalence of a south-east wind and a great drought [3] (the rains did not commence in Germany before 1529), swarms of locusts, [4] as if this prognostic too of great epidemics was not to be wanting. Of fiery meteors, which also frequently appeared in the following years, and in the aggregate plainly indicated an unusual condition of the atmosphere, much notice, after the manner of the times, is occasionally taken. [5] Particular attention was excited by a long fiery train which was seen on the 7th of January, 1529, at seven o'clock in the morning, throughout Mecklenburg and Pomerania. [6] Another fiery sign (chasma) was seen in the March on the 9th of January, at ten o'clock at night, [7] as likewise similar atmospherical phenomena in other localities.

Comets appeared in the course of this year in unusual number. [8] The first on the 11th of August, 1527, before daybreak; it was seen throughout Europe, and it has often been confounded by more recent writers with an atmospherical phenomenon resembling a comet which appeared on the 11th of October. [9] The second was seen in July and August, 1529, in Germany, France, and Italy.
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[1] Campo, pp. 150, 151.

[2] Grafton, p. 431. Wagenaar,Vol. II. p. 516.
[3] Haftitz, p. 130.

[4] Annales Berolino-Marchici (no numbers to the pages).
[5] Magnus Hundt, fol. 4. b., and many others.
[6] Bonn, p. 143. A girl in Lübeck died of fright at this meteor.
[7] Haftitz, p. 131. Angelus, p. 317.
[8] It must not be thought that the author, because he has brought forward these notices, has any preformed opinions whatever respecting the import of these heavenly bodies. The historian cannot pass over contemporaneous occurrences, whatever may be the conclusion which the limited extent of our knowledge enables us to draw from them.

[9] Pingré, T. I. p. 485. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 410. a.


Four other comets are also said to have made their appearance this year at the same time; but it is probable that these were only fiery meteors of an unknown kind. [1] The third was in 1531, and was visible in Europe from the 1st of August till the 3rd of September. This was the great comet of Halley, which returned in the year 1835. [2] The fourth was in 1532, visible from the 2nd of October to the 8th of November; it appeared again in 166l. Lastly, the fifth, in 1533, seen from the middle of June till August. [4]

Contemporaries agree remarkably in their accounts of the insufferable state of the weather in the eventful year 1529. The winter was particularly mild, and the vegetation was far too early, so that all the world was rejoicing at the mildness and beauty of the spring. The people wore violets, at Erfurt, on St. Matthew's day (the 24th of February), little expecting that this friendly omen was to precede so severe a calamity. [5] Throughout the spring and summer wet weather continued to prevail. Constant torrents of rain overflowed the fields, the rivers passed their banks; all hopes of the cultivation were entirely frustrated, [6] and misery and famine spread in all directions. A heavy rain of four days' continuance, which took place in the south of Germany in the middle of June, and was called the St. Vitus's Torrent, is still remembered in modern times as an unheard-of event. Whole districts of country were completely laid under water, and many persons perished who had not time to save their lives. [7] A similar, very widely-extended, and perhaps universal, storm again occurred on the 10th of August, and occasioned great floods, especially in Thuringia and Saxony. [8] Upon the whole, the sun rarely broke through the heavy dark clouds. The latter part of the summer and the whole of the autumn, with the exception of a series of hot days which commenced the 24th of August, [9] remained

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[1] Pingré p. 486. Angelus, p. 318. Crusius, Vol. II. p. 223.
[2] Pingré, p. 487. Campo, p. 154. Angelus, p. 320, and numerous other accounts. It performs its revolution in 76 years, and was observed in 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, and 1759.
[3] Pingre, p. 491. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 433. b.
[4] Pingré, p. 496. Angelus, p. 322. Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 435. a.
[5] Erfurt Chronicle. Spangenberg, who has availed himself frequently of this chronicle, makes use of the same words, M. Chr. fol. 431. b.
[6] They called the sour wine of this year den Wiedertäufer-Wein; the Anabaptist wine. Schwelin, p. 144.
[7] Crusius, Vol. II. p. 323. St. Vitus's day is on the 15th of June. On the river Neckar, at Heidelberg, they took out a child which had floated down the stream in its cradle unharmed for a distance of six (German) miles. Franck, fol. 252. b.
[8] Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 432. a.

[9] Klemzen, p. 254.

gloomy, cold, and wet. People fancied they were breathing the foggy air of Britain.[1]

We ought not to omit here to notice that in the north of Germany, and especially in the March of Brandenburg, eating fish, which were caught in great abundance, was generally esteemed detrimental. Malignant and contagious diseases were said to have been traced to this cause, and it was a matter of surprise that the only food which nature bounteously bestowed was so decidedly injurious. [2] It might be difficult now to discover the cause of this phenomenon, of which we possess only isolated notices, yet, passing over all other conjectures, it is quite credible either that an actual fish poison was developed, [3] or, if this notion be rejected, that a disordered condition of life, such as must be supposed to have existed in a great famine, rendered fish prejudicial to health, in the same way as sometimes occurs after protracted intermittent fevers, when the functions of the bowels are disturbed in a manner peculiar to this disease.

But it was not the inhabitants of the water alone which were affected by hidden causes of excitement in collective organic life; the fowls of the air likewise sickened, who, in their delicate and irritable organs of respiration, feel the injurious influence of the atmosphere much earlier and more sensitively than any of the unfeathered tribes, and have often been the harbingers of great danger, ere man was aware of its approach. In the neighbourhood of Freyburg in the Breisgau, dead birds were found scattered under the trees, with boils as large as peas under their wings, which indicated among them a disease, that in all probability extended far beyond the southern districts of the Rhine. [4]

The famine in Germany, during this year, is described by respectable authorities in a tone of deep sympathy. Swabia, Lorraine, Alsace, and the other southern countries bordering on the Rhine, were especially visited, so that misery there reached the same frightful height as in France. The poor emigrated and roved over the country, solely to prolong their wretched existence. Above a thousand of these half-starved mendicants came to Strasburg out of Swabia. They obtained shelter in a monastery, and
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[1] Schwelin, p. 144. Newenar, fol. 69. a. "fecit tamen huius anni, ac fortasse etiam prucedentium intempories, fluminum exundationes, frigora cum humiditate perpetuo coniuncta, ut jam in Germania Britannicus quidam aër suscitatus videri possit." Similar accounts are met with in almost all the chronicles.
[2] Leuthinger, p. 90. see "Scriptorum," etc.
[3] Compare Autenrieth's excellent work on this subject.
[4] Schiller, sect. I. cap. 2. fol. 3. b.


attempts were made to revive them, yet many were unable to bear the food that was placed before them. Attention and nourishment did but hasten their death. Another body of more than eight hundred came in the autumn from Lorraine. These unfortunate people were kept in the city, and fed during the whole winter, [1] yet it is easy to conceive that this benevolence, which was no doubt likewise exercised in other cities, [2]-for when was humanity ever found wanting in Germany?-could only occasionally alleviate this deeply-rooted calamity. In the Venetian territories, many hundreds are said to have perished with hunger, and a like distress probably prevailed all over Upper Italy.

In the north of Germany, including the extensive sandy plains, en which wet weather is not so injurious in its effect as on a heavy clayey soil, the state of the country was upon the whole more tolerable; [3] yet, independently of the innumerable evils to which a scarcity gives rise, suicide was more frequent,[4] which was certainly a rarity in the sixteenth century, and only explicable by supposing that the powers of the mind became exhausted by the many and various passions, which in every individual locality excited a spirit of hatred and party feeling. The consequence of such a state of turmoil is a cold disgust of life, which finds, in the first adverse event that may occur, a pretext for self-destruction, that want alone would seldom if ever occasion: for man, if his spirit be unbroken, runs the chance of starvation in times of famine, and trusts to the faintest gleam of hope, rather than, of his own accord, abandon the enjoyment of life.

It is no less in point here to notice a kind of faint lassitude, which, to the great astonishment of the people, was felt, especially in Pomerania, in June and July, [6] up to the very period when the Sweating Sickness broke out. In the midst of their work, and without any conceivable cause, people became palsied in their hands and feet, so that even if their lives had depended upon it, they were incapable of the slightest exertion. [6] The treatment which was found successful, was to cover the patients warmly, and to supply them with nourishing food, of which they ate plenty

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[1] Franck, fol. 243. b.
[2] Basle among others was particularly distinguished. Steitler, part II. p. 34.
[3] Spangenberg, loc. cit.

[4] Leuthinger, p. 89.
[5] From Whitsuntide till towards St. James's day, the 25th of July. Klemzen, p. 254.
[6] Two masters of vessels, who had quitted the helm from a sudden attack of this kind, were in danger of grounding upon the Mole. Their situation was, however, noticed, and they were saved.

Klemzen.

fully, and thus recovered again in three or four days. Phenomena of this kind, which in the present instance evidently depended on atmospherical influence, are but the extreme gradations of a generally morbid dullness of vital feeling, which might easily pass into an actual disgust of life, such as would lead to suicide.

The following years were by no means all marked by a complete failure in produce. The year 1530 was, on the contrary, plentiful, there being only some partial failures, as, for example, that which arose from a great flood in the district of the Saal, which occurred in the midst of the harvest time. [1] A very cold spring and a wet cold summer followed in 1531, with only occasional fine days; yet the ground was not altogether unproductive, and the great distress which would otherwise have been felt in Thuringia and Saxony, was checked by the establishment of granaries, so that the people were not obliged, as they often were in Swabia, to mow the green corn that they might dry the ears in ovens, and support life upon the yet unripe grain.

The years 1532 and 1533 were again very sterile, as also 1534, in consequence of the great heat and dryness of the summer. Finally, in the year 1535, the regular change of the seasons, and with it a prosperous state of cultivation, seemed to be restored, and the scarcity ceased. [2] The reports from different localities in Germany vary much, but the scarcity prevailed for full seven years [3] (from 1528 to 1534), and since its causes were not discoverable, because it was only seen by each observer in his own narrow circle, the old German adage was often called to mind:
"If there is to be a scarcity, it is of no avail even should all the mountains be made of flour." [4]

SECT. 5.-SWEATING SICKNESS IN GERMANY, 1529.

These facts are sufficient for a preliminary sketch of the background on which moved the spectre of England, to which we now return. How long the sweating sickness may have raged there after Henry the VIIIth quitted his secluded place of refuge in order to return to his capital, no one has left any written account to show. That it spread very rapidly over the whole kingdom

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[1] Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 432. a.
[2] Ibid. fol. 433. a. 435. b. Schwelin, pp. 149. 150.
[3] A Chronicler of the Marches even assures us that it lasted until 1546. Annales Berol. Marchic: but the other contemporary writers contradict this.
[4] Spangenberg, fol. 432. a.


is decidedly to be presumed, and might probably still be easily ascertainable from the written records of different places. The notion that it did not rage violently in any town more than a few weeks, is justified by corresponding phenomena of more recent occurence, yet no doubt it continued to exist among the people, though in a mitigated degree, till the mild winter season. But there are not even the slightest data by which it can be made out that it was still in England during the summer of 1529. As an epidemic it certainly existed no longer, yet on a consideration of the state of the air in that year, it is not to be denied that isolated cases of Sweating Fever may have appeared; for in pestilences of this kind, provided their original causes continue, there always occur some straggling cases. [1] The Sweating Sickness did not advance westward to Ireland, nor did it pass the Scottish border; the historians, who would certainly have recorded so calamitous an event, are entirely silent respecting such an occurrence. The tragedy was, however, destined to be enacted elsewhere; other nations were to play their part in it.

Hamburgh was the first place on the continent in which the Sweating Sickness broke out. Men's minds were still in great excitement there in consequence of the events of the few preceding months. The Protestants had, after long and stormy contests, at length vanquished the Papists. Under the wise direction of Bugenhagen the great work of Reformation was just completed. The monasteries were abolished, the monks dismissed, schools were established, and peace again returned with the enjoyment of ecclesiastical freedom. Just at this moment [2] the dreaded pestilence, of which wonderful accounts had been so long and so often heard, unexpectedly made its appearance. It immediately excited, as it had ever done in England, general dismay, and before any instructions as to its treatment could be obtained, either from the English or from Germans who had been in England, it destroyed daily from forty to sixty, and altogether, within the space of twenty-two days, [3] about 1100 inhabitants, for such was the number of coffins which were at this time manufactured by the undertakers. The duration of the great mortality, for thus we
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[1] Newenar indeed maintains that the Sweating Fever used to break out in England every year, fol. 68. b., but such general and unsupported assertions coming from foreigners (the Graf Hermann von Newenar was provost of Cologne) are wholly unworthy of credence.
[2] About the 25th of July.
[3] From St. James's day, the 26th of July, until the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 15th of August. Staphorst. -


would designate the more violent raging of this pestilence, was, however, much shorter, and may be roughly estimated at about nine days, for from the fragment of a letter received from Hamburgh, which was dispatched to Wittenberg on the 8th of August, by a person who was at that time burgomaster, it appears that, for some days past, no one had died of. the Sweating Fever, excepting one or two drunkards, and that the citizens were then beginning to take breath again. We may thus judge, from the unauthenticated account here mentioned, that the disease lasted about a fortnight longer, and that the loss of lives amounted to 2000. At all events, however, the pestilence manifested itself on the continent with the same malignity which was peculiar to it from the first, and if the assertion made at a distance respecting the mortality in Hamburgh were overcharged, [1] yet there certainly existed sufficient foundation for exaggerations of this sort, which are never wanting in times of such great danger. The historians of this, even at that time, powerful and civilized commercial town, have on the whole said but little regarding this important event -a circumstance easily explicable from the constant occupation of men's minds in religious affairs, and from the well-known short visitation of the epidemic, which, like a transient meteor, needed quick and cautious observation if any valuable information respecting the occurrence was to be transmitted to posterity. Some particulars of its first origin have, however, been preserved amid a mass of general assertions which convey no information. Thus it appears that the Sweating Sickness did not show itself in the town until a Captain Hermann Evers, just about the time mentioned (the 25th of July), returned from England, bringing on board with him a number of young people (probably travellers as well as sailors), of whom at least twelve died of this disease within two days. [2] According to another account, those who died
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[1] It appears, for instance, somewhere in the second volume of Leibnitz, Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, that 8000 people had died of the Sweating Fever in Hamburgh. An unknown Chronicler in Staphorst, Part II. Vol. 1. p. 85, states 2000.
[2] "Moreover in the year 1529, about St. James's day, Almighty God sent a terrible disease upon the city of Hamburgh; it was the Sweating Sickness, which showed itself in a different manner, and began when Captain Hermann Evers came from England on St. James's day with many young companions, of whom, in the course of two days, twelve died of this disease, which was unknown as well in Hamburgh as in other countries, so that the oldest person did not recollect to have seen a similar disease." An unknown eye-witness, quoted in Staphorst, Part II. Vol. 1. p. 83. Another person expresses himself to the same effect, p. 85. "The disease had its origin in England, for the people were there attacked in the street when they came on shore, and those who came in contact with them, many of whom were of the lower class, took it."


were not taken ill in England, but on the voyage, and the pestilence broke out after the rest of the crew had disembarked. On this point we have further a most respectable testimony to the fact, that in the night after the landing of Hermann Evers, four men died in Hamburgh of the Sweating Sickness.[1]

If we examine a little more closely these very valuable accounts, the credibility of which there is no reason to doubt, it must especially be taken into account, that at this time the Sweating Sickness had ceased to exist as an epidemic in England for at least half a year, that its appearance in single cases, although not contradictory to general views, is nevertheless by no means borne out by proof from historical evidence, and that thus it is a gratuitous and unsupported assumption that the return of Hermann Evers' crew was connected with any Sweating Sickness at all in England. If we consider, on the other hand, that the North Sea, even in ordinary years, is very foggy, so that, owing to the prevalence of north-west winds, it precipitates very heavy rain clouds over Germany; and if we bear in mind, that in the year 1529 it produced far heavier fogs than usual, we shall perceive in its waters the principal cause why the English Sweating Sickness was then developed in its greatest violence, and we may thence assume, with a greater degree of probability, that this pestilence broke out among the crew of Hermann Evers spontaneously, and without any connexion with England, in the same way, perhaps, as it did formerly on board Henry the VIIth's fleet. This supposition is strengthened by the circumstance that the ships of those times were excessively filthy, and the kind of life spent on board them was, independently of the wretched provision, uncomfortable in the highest degree, nay, almost insupportable, so that even in short voyages, the scurvy, which was the dread of sailors in those days, was of very common occurrence. Finally, we still possess the most distinct accounts, that unusual occurrences took place in the North Seas. Thus during Lent it was observed with astonishment at Stettin, that porpoises came in numbers up the frische Haff as far as the bridge, and that the Baltic cast on its shores many dead animals of this kind, [2] so that we are fully justified in
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Notices of uncertain date to be found in Adelung, at p. 77. Steltzner, Part II. p. 219. In the abbrev. Hamb. Chron. p. 45, and elsewhere.
[1] "As soon as the ship arrived in Hamburgh people began to die throughout the city, and in the morning it was rumoured that four persons had died of it." From Reimar Kock's MS. Chron. of Lübeck. For the extract from it the author is indebted to the kindness of Professor Ackermann of Lübeck.
[2] Klemzen, p. 254. It was thought that the waters of the Baltic were poisoned.


concluding that there existed at that time a more intense development than usual of morbific influences in the marine atmosphere.

With respect, however, to the influence which the companions of Hermann Evers, impregnated as they were with the odour of the Sweating Sickness, had on the inhabitants of Hamburgh, it cannot be denied, that their intercourse with those inhabitants, in the filthy and narrow lanes of that commercial city, may have given an impulse to the eruption of the pestilence, so far as to make the already existing fuel more inflammable, or to furnish the first sparks for its ignition: yet it is equally undeniable that, under the existing circumstances, the epidemic Sweating Sickness would have broken out in Germany even without the presence of Captain Evers, although it might, perhaps, have been some weeks later, and not have made its first appearance in Hamburgh, whose inhabitants, owing to the constant prevalence of the North Sea fog, were, to all appearance, already prepared for the first reception of this fatal disease.

To determine to a day when epidemics which have been long in preparation have broken out, is, even for an observer who is present, exceedingly difficult, nay, sometimes, under the most favourable circumstances, impossible; for there occur in these visitations, certain transitions into the epidemic form of diseases which are allied to it, as well as a gradual conversion into it of morbid phenomena, which have usually begun some time before. Unless we are greatly mistaken, such was the case in the pestilence of which we are now treating; although it must be confessed, that we can obtain no precise information on this point from the physicians of those times. The following statements, for the absolute precision of which we cannot pledge ourselves after a lapse of 300 years, must therefore be judged according to this general experience; and though singly they may prove little, yet taken all together, they are capable of demonstrating the peculiar and almost wonderful manner in which the Sweating Fever spread over Germany.

In Lübeck, the next city in the Baltic, the Sweating Sickness appeared about the same time; for so early as the Friday before St. Peter in vinculis (30th of July), it was known, that on the preceding night a woman had died of it. [1] On the following days cases of death fearfully increased, and the disorder soon raged so violently, that people were again reminded of the Black Death
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[1] Reimar Kock's Chronicle of Lübeck.


of 1349. The inhabitants died without number, as well in the city as in the environs, and the consternation was equal to that felt in Hamburgh. [1] In general, as was everywhere the case, robust young people of the better classes were affected, while on the other hand, children and poor people living in cellars and garrets almost all of them escaped. [2]

Now one might, either on the supposition of a progressive alteration in the atmosphere, such as occurs in the influenza, or on that of a communication of the disease from man to man, which, however, cannot be considered as a principal cause of this epidemic, have expected a gradual extension of the Sweating Sickness from Hamburgh and Lübeck to the surrounding country. This did not, however, in fact take place; for the disease next broke out at Twickau, at the foot of the Erzgebirge, distant from Hamburgh fifty German miles, and without having previously visited the rich commercial city of Leipzig. By the 14th of August, nineteen persons who had died of it were buried at Twickau; and on one of the following nights above a hundred [3] sickened, whence it is to be deduced that the pestilence was severe at that place.

Possibly the great storm on the 10th of August may have given an impulse to the development of this very remarkable epidemic; for a highly electrical state of the atmosphere increases the susceptibility for diseases. It is likewise not to be overlooked, that on the 24th of August, while the sky was overcast there came on an insufferable heat, [4] which must have debilitated the body after such long-continued cold wet weather. At all events, in the beginning of September, we find that the Sweating Fever broke out at the same time at Stettin, Dantzig, and other Prussian cities; at Augsburg, far to the south on the other side of the Danube, at Cologne on the Rhine, at Strasbaurg, at Frankfort on the Maine, at Marburg, [5] at Göttingen, and at Hanover. [6] The position of these cities gives an impressive notion of the extent of country of which the English Sweating Sickness took possession, as it were by a magic stroke. It was like a violent conflagration, which spread in all directions; the flames, however, did not issue from one focus, but rose up every

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[1] "In the year 1529, this violent disease passed in a very short time all over Germany, and in Lübeck many of its most distinguished citizens died on the vigil of St. Peter in Vinculis." Regkman, p. 135. Compare Kirchring, p. 143. Bonn, p. 144.

[2] Reimar Kock.

[3] Schmidt, p. 307.
[4] See above, p. 225; and Klemzen, p. 254.
[5] Euric. Cordus.

[6] Gruner, It. p. 23.


where, as if self-ignited; and whilst all this occurred in Germany and Prussia, the inhabitants of the other northern countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, perhaps also Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, were likewise visited by this violent disease.

The malady appeared in Stettin on the 31st of August, among the servants of the Duke. [1] On the 1st of September, the Duchess herself sickened, in common with many people about the court, and burgesses in the city. A few days afterwards several thousands were affected by the disease, so that there was not a street from which some corpses were not daily cared out. This dreadful period of terror, however, did not last much longer than a week, for about the 8th of September the pestilence abated in its violence, so as no longer to be regarded with terror; and after this time only a few isolated cases occurred. [2]

On the same day, namely, the 1st of September, the disease appeared in Dantzig, fifty German miles further to the eastward, and was here also so destructive that it carried off in a short time 3000 inhabitants, [3] some say even 6000-but this seems certainly too high an estimate for Dantzig, and probably includes the greater part of Prussia. If we were to give credence to an anonymous reporter, [4] this plague abated in five days, and relieved the inhabitants from the mortal anxiety which, until they recovered their senses, led them everywhere to commit acts of injustice and injury to avert the danger.

In Augsburg we find the Sweating Sickness on the 6th of September. It lasted there also only six days, affected about 1500 of the inhabitants, and destroyed more than half that number, or, as it is said, about 800.

At Cologne it appeared precisely at the same time, as we learn from the expressions of the Count von Newenar, a prelate of that place, who finished his account of this disorder on the 7th of September. [6] At Strasburg it broke out some ten or twelve days earlier, namely, on the 24th of August. In this place about 3000 people sickened in one week, but very few of them died. [7] At Frankfort on the Maine they were holding the autumn fair (which began on the 7th of September) just at the time when
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[1] Namely, on the Tuesday after the Beheading of John the Baptist (29th Aug.), which felt on a Sunday, for S. Aegidius was on the Wednesday. The dates are given throughout according to Pilgrim's Calendarium chronologicum.
[2] Klemzen, p. 255.

[3] Curicke, p. 271.
[4] Kronica der Preussen, fol. 191. b.
[5] Stettler, II. p. 33.

[6] In Gratorol. Fol. 74. b. -
[7] Gruner, It. p. 25, according to MS. Chronicles.


the Sweating Sickness prevailed, [1] whence arose the opinion, which has been broached again in more modern times, [2] that the traders on their return carried the disease thence throughout the whole of Germany, and that in the intercourse by means of this fair, the main cause of the spread of the epidemic was to be found. After the facts which have been brought forward, such a narrow view needs no refutation. The Sweating Sickness was fleeter than the conveyances of goods and people, which at that time made their way along the pathless and unbeaten roads; for "no sooner did a rumour of the approach of the disease reach any place than the disease itself accompanied it." [3]

Between the boundaries which have been indicated, only a few isolated towns and villages escaped, and there are probably few of the chronicles of that age, so prolific of great events, in which the dreadful scourge of the year 1529 is not expressly mentioned; yet the sweating fever, like other great epidemics, spread, doubtless, very unequally, and it is ascertained that the further south it extended, the milder it was upon the whole; and also that all those places where it broke out late suffered beyond comparison less than those which were visited early in September and in the latter part of August; for not to lay much stress on the sultry heat from the 24th of August, which probably did not last long, the chief cause of its great malignity at first was the violent method resorted to in the treatment of the sick, the inapplicability of which was fortunately soon perceived. Only one citizen was affected with the Sweating Sickness in Marburg, and even he recovered, [4] whilst at Leipzig the pestilence either never broke out at all or very much later, perhaps in October or November; for the physicians of that place gave it clearly to be understood in their pamphlets, that they knew nothing of the disease from their own observations, [5] and no sooner did the report get abroad that the dreaded enemy had not penetrated within the walls of this commercial city, than crowds of fugitives came thither from far and near in order to seek protection and security, although the place in itself was by no means fitted for a place of refuge, for the swampy atmosphere which rose from the
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[1] Franck, fol. 253. a.
[2] By Joseph Franck, in the latest edition of his Praxeos Medicae Universae Precepta. Compare Gruner, It. p. 28.
[3] Klemzen, p. 254.
[4] This appears from a letter of Euricius Cordus to the Hessian private secretary, Joh. Rau von Nordeck, at the end of the 2nd edition of his Regimen.
[5] Magnus Hundt closed his on the 7th October.

city ditches begot, even in those days, in the narrow and dark streets, many lingering diseases. [1]

SECT. 6.-IN THE NETHERLANDS.

It is remarkable that the Netherlands were visited by the Sweating Fever [2] full four weeks later, although the commercial intercourse with England, if we were to attach any especial importance to this circumstance, was far more considerable than that of the German cities in the North Sea. It appeared for the first time in Amsterdam on the 27th of September in the forenoon, whilst the city was enveloped in a thick fog, [3] and just at the same time, perhaps a day earlier, in Antwerp, where, on the 29th of September, they made a solemn procession in order by prayer to avert greater harm from the city; for in the last days of September 400 to 500 people died of the English Sweating Sickness at that place. [4] It might have been supposed that the damp soil of Holland, and its impenetrable fogs, would invite the pestilence much earlier than the high and serene country between the Alps and the Danube, or the far distant land of Prussia, but the development of epidemics follows no human calculation or medical views! In the towns around Amsterdam the Sweating Fever appears not to have broken out until the mortality had ceased in that city, that is to say, five days after the 27th of September, so that we cannot be far wrong in assuming that in the latter end of that month, and the commencement of October, it had spread over the whole territory of the Netherlands, including Belgium. [5] Alkmaar and Waterland remained free, [6] as doubtless had been the case with particular places both in England and Germany.
 

The exceedingly short time that the Sweating Sickness lasted in the different places that it visited, was as astonishing as its original appearance. For since it raged in Amsterdam for only
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[1] Bayer von Elbogen, cap. 7.
[2] It was called there the Ingelsche Sweetsieckte, or the Sweating Sickness.
[3] Forest. L. VI. Obs. VII. Schol. p. 157. Obs. VIII. c. Schol. p. 158. Wagenaar, T. II. p. 508.
[4] Pontan. p. 762. Haraeus, T. I. p. 581. Antwerpsch Chronykje, p. 31. Ditmar, p. 473.
[5] "Laquelle (sa suette) s'estendit par le pays d'Oostlande, de Hollande, Zeelande, et autres des pays bas, on en étoit endedens vingt et quatre heures mort ou guarry, elle ne dura in Zeelande pour le plus que  15jours, dont plusieurs en moururent." Le Petit, T. I. Livr. VII. p. 81.
[6] Forest. loc. cit.


five days, and not much longer, as we have shown, in Antwerp and many German towns, it could hardly have continued more than fifteen days in any other places; thus displaying the same peculiarity on this occasion by which it had already been marked in its former visitations. This short period, however, must not be understood to include the sporadic occurrence of the disease, otherwise, as a contemporary of credit assures us, that the sweating fever attacked some persons twice and others three or even four times, [1] we might thence conclude, that, although perhaps in some places the pestilence did, after raging for a certain number of days, suddenly cease, so that no isolated cases afterwards occurred, yet that the general duration of its prevalence was longer than has been stated.

SECT. 7.-DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NORWAY.

The eruption of the Sweating Fever in Denmark [2] took place at the latter end of September, for on the 29th of that month, four hundred of the inhabitants died of it at Copenhagen. [3] Elsinore was likewise severely visited, [4] and probably, about the same time, most of the towns and villages in that kingdom. But the accounts on this subject in the Danish Chronicles are extremely defective, [5] as owing to the extraordinary rapidity of this mortal malady, contemporary writers neglected to record, for the information of posterity, the details of a phenomenon, which there, as in other countries, must certainly have been striking from its general prevalence. Even from the imperfect notices that were given respecting it, thus much, however, is clearly perceptible, that it was the same well-known disease as elsewhere, which was now observed to pass through Denmark. In proof of this, it was principally young and strong people, as had been originally the case in England, who sickened, the old and infirm being less affected, and in the course of four and twenty hours, or at most within two days (?), the life or death of the patient was decided. 
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[1] Erasm. Epist. Lib. XXVI. ep. 58. col. 1477. b. At Zerbst the Sweating Fever lasted, in like manner, only five days. Gruner, It. p. 29.
[2] It was called there "den engelske Sved."
[3] Frederick 1. Histor. p. 181. The same words in Huitfeld, T. II. p. 1315.
[4] Boesens Beskrivelse over Helsingöer. For this statement the author has to thank Dr. Mansa, regimental physician at Copenhagen.
[5] Dr. Baden, D.C.L., took much pains, at the request of Gruner, in making researches, but has elicited nothing more than Huitfeld has given. A copy of his Latin letter to Gruner on this subject has likewise reached the author through Dr. Mansa.


At the same period as in Denmark, the Sweating Sickness spread over the Scandinavian Peninsula, and was productive of the same violent symptoms in the sick, the same terror, and the same mortal anguish in those who were affected by it, not only in the capital of Sweden, where Magnus Erikson, brother of king Gustavus Wasa, died of it, but also over the whole kingdom, and in Norway. The northern historians gave graphic accounts of it, which, on a careful examination of manuscript documents, might perhaps gain still more in colouring and spirit. [1] That the Sweating Sickness likewise penetrated into Lithuania, Poland, and Livonia, if not into a part of Russia, we know only in a general way, [2] but doubtless there are written documents still in existence in these countries, which only need some careful inquirer to bring them to light. In the mean time, however, it is to be presumed, from the early appearance of the disorder in Prussia, that it prevailed in those countries at the same time as in Germany, Denmark, and the Scandinavian Peninsula. No certain trace is anywhere to be discovered that the Sweating Sickness appeared so late as December, 1529, or in January of the following year, so that, after having lasted upon the whole a quarter of a year, it disappeared everywhere, without leaving behind it any sign of its existence, or giving rise to the development of any other diseases. Among these, it pursued its course as a comet among planets, without interfering either with the French Hunger Fever, or the Italian Petechial Fever, proving a striking example to all succeeding ages of those general shocks to which the lives of the human race are subject, and a fearful scourge to the generation which it visited.
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[1] Dalin, D. III. p. 221. Engelske Svetten. In Tegel's History of King Gustavus I. Part I. p. 267, general notices only are to be found respecting the English Sweating Sickness in Sweden, without any exact date (autumn of 1529) or description of the disease, such as are met with without number in the German Chronicles. Sven Hedin clearly estimates the mortality in the epidemic sweating fever too highly, when he compares it, p. 27, with the depopulation caused by the Black Death. He gives (p. 47) a striking passage on the Sweating Sickness from Linneus's pathological praelections. The great naturalist has, however, allowed free scope to his imagination, and, like all the physicians of modern times who have delivered their sentiments on the English Sweating Sickness, knows far too little of the facts to be able to form a right judgment on the subject. (Supplement till Handboken för Praktiska Läkarevetenskapen, rörande epidemiska och smittosamma sjukdomar i allmänhet, och särdeles de Pestilentialiska. 1 sta St. Stockholm, 1805. 8vo.)
[2] From Reimar Kock's MS. Chronicle of Lübeck, and Forest, loc. cit. Compare Gruner's Itinerarium, which is prepared throughout with laudable and even tedious diligence, but which met with so little acknowledgment in the Brunonian age, that it bas already become a rare work.

SECT. 8. -TERROR.

The alarm which prevailed in Germany surpasses all description, and bordered upon maniacal despair. As soon as the pestilence appeared on the continent, horrifying accounts of the unheard-of sufferings of those affected, and the certainty of their death, passed like wild-fire from mouth to mouth. Men's minds were paralysed with terror, and the imagination exaggerated the calamity, which seemed to have come upon them like a last judgment. The English Sweating Sickness was the theme of discourse everywhere, and if any one happened to be taken ill of fever, no matter of what kind, it was immediately converted into this demon, whose spectre form continually haunted the oppressed spirit. At the same time, the unfortunate delusion existed, that whoever wished to escape death when seized with the English pestilence, must perspire for twenty-four hours without intermission. [1] So they put the patients, whether they had the Sweating Sickness or not (for who had calmness enough to distinguish it?), instantly to bed, covered them with feather-beds and furs, and whilst the stove was heated to the utmost, closed the doors and windows with the greatest care to prevent all access of cool air. In order, moreover, to prevent the sufferer, should he be somewhat impatient, from throwing off his hot load, some persons in health likewise lay upon him, and thus oppressed him to such a degree, that he could neither stir hand nor foot, and finally, in this rehearsal of hell, being bathed in an agonizing sweat, gave up the ghost, when, perhaps, if his too officious relatives had manifested a little discretion, he might have been saved without difficulty. [2]

There dwelt a physician in Zwickau-we no longer know the name of this estimable man-who, full of zeal for the good of mankind, opposed this destructive folly. He went from house to
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[1] "According to which it was given out by some, that a sweat must be kept up for twenty-four hours in succession, and in the mean time, that no air should be admitted to the patient. This treatment sent many to their graves."-Erfurt Chronicle.
[2] Erfurt Chronicle, and in the same strain Spangenberg, M. Chr. fol. 402. b. Pomarius, p. 617, and Schmidt, p. 305. Gemmasuffocari iniectis molibus, sese vitam in summis angustiis exhalare, sed assistentes has querelas ex rabie proficisci, medicorum opinione persuasi, urgebant continue usque ad 24 horas," etc. writes of the Netherlands, L. 1. c. 8. p. 189, having received his account from his father, who was himself the subject of the Sweating Sickness: "Consuti (sewn up) et violenter operti clamitabant misere, obtestabantur Deum atque hominum fidem, sese dimitterent, se suffocari iniectis molibus, sese vitam in summis angustiis exhalare, sed assistentes has querelas ex rabie proficisci, medicorum opinione persuasi, urgebant continue usque ad 24 horas," etc.


house, and wherever he found a patient buried in a hot bed, dragged him out with his own hands, everywhere forbad that the sick should thus be tortured with heat, and saved by his decisive conduct many, who but for him, must have been smothered like the rest. [1] It often happened, at this time, that amidst a circle of friends, if the Sweating Sickness was only brought to mind by a single word, first one, and then another, was seized with a tormenting anguish, their blood curdled, and, certain of their destruction, they quietly slunk away home, and there actually became a prey to death. [2] This mortal fear is a heavy addition to the scourge of rapidly fatal epidemics, and is, properly speaking, an inflammatory disease of the mind, which, in its proximate effects upon the spirits, bears some resemblance to the nightmare. It confuses the understanding, so as to render it incapable of estimating external circumstances according to their true relations to each other; it magnifies a gnat into a monster, a distant improbable danger into a horrible spectre which takes a firm hold of the imagination; all actions are perverted, and if, during this state of distraction, any other disease break out, the patient conceives that he is the devoted victim of the much-dreaded epidemic, like those unfortunate persons, who, having been bitten by a harmless animal, nevertheless become the subjects of an imaginary hydrophobia. Thus, during the calamitous autumn of 1529, many may have been seized with only an imaginary Sweating Sickness, and under the towering heap of clothing on their loaded beds have met with their graves. [3] Others among these brain-sick people who had the good fortune to remain exempt from bodily ailments, many of them even boasting of their firmness, fell, through the violent commotions in their nerves, into a state of chronic hypochondriasis, which, under circumstances of this sort, is marked by shuddering, and a feeling of uneasiness and dread at the bare mention of the original cause of terror, even when there is no longer any trace of its existence. [4] A person thus disordered in his mind, was recently seen to destroy himself [5] on receiving false intelligence of the return of the late
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[1] Schmidt, loc. cit.
[2] - "Animos omnium terrore perculit adeo ut multis metus et imaginatio morbum conciliarit." Erasm. Epist. L. XXVI. ep. 56. c. 1476. a. Spangenberg, loc. cit.
[3] "Many an one sweats for fear and thinks he has the English sweat, and when he afterwards hath slept it off, acknowledges that it was all nonsense." Bayer v. Elbogen, cap. 8.
[4] The author could adduce some extraordinary instances of this kind which have occurred in his own practice.
[5] It was a greengrocer in Paris. Berliner Vossische Zeitung, Sept. 2, 1833.


epidemic; thus betraying conduct even more dastardly than those cowardly soldiers, who, when the cannon begin to roar, inflict on themselves slight wounds that they may avoid sharing the dangers of the battle.

To have a full notion how men's minds were previously prepared for this state, we have but to think on the monstrous events which took place in Germany. Twelve years earlier the gigantic work of the Reformation had been begun by the greatest German of that age, and, with the Divine power of the gospel, triumphantly carried through up to that period. The excitement was beyond all bounds. The new doctrine took root in towns and villages, but nevertheless, the most mortal party hatred raged on all sides, and, as usually happens in times of such impassioned commotion, selfishness was the animating spirit which ruled on both sides, and seized the torch of faith, in order, for her unholy purposes, to envelope the world in fire and flames.

So early as the year 1521, during Luther's concealment within the walls of Wartburg, false prophets [1] arose, and desired, without the aid of their great master, who was the soul of that age, to complete a work with the spirit of which they were not imbued. They brought the wildest passions into action, but, destitute of innate firmness, and incapable of curbing themselves, they became incendiaries and iconoclasts. Immediately upon this the unhappy peasant-war broke out-a consequence of the arbitrary conduct and oppression practised from times of old, for which the abettors of Dr. Eck's sentiments would charge Luther himself as answerable; not perceiving that it was the excitement of the times and of the false prophets which had given occasion to the rebellion. Events occurred, from the recollection of which human feeling still recoils. Never was the fair soil of Germany the scene of more atrocious cruelties; and after vengeance had played her insane part without opposition, the rnelancholy result was, that hundreds of thousands of once peaceful, and for the most part misled, peasants, fell by the sword of the Lansquenets and of the executioner, while their numerous survivors became a prey to the death which visited the country in the following years. The battle of Frankenhausen on the 15th of May, 1525, and Münzer's subsequent execution, closed this bloody scene. The consequences of such intestine commotions continued however to be felt long after, and considered apart from their highly prejudicial influence
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[1] Carlstadt, Nic. Storch, Marcus Thomä, Marus Stubner, Martin Cellarius, and Thomas Münzer.

on the prosperity of the people, conduced not a little to break the spirit of mankind, signs of which the wise men of those times have plainly pointed out. [1]

SECT. 9.-MORAL CONSEQUENCES.

The dejection was increased by the universally active spirit of persecution with which it was still hoped to eradicate the new doctrine. Even whilst the English pestilence was raging, two Protestants were burnt at Cologne. [2] In the same year faggots blazed at Mecklin, Verden, and Paris, by the flames of which the ancient faith was to be protected against the pestilence of freedom of thought. Sentences of death were also quite commonly pronounced against the Anabaptists in Protestant countries. The University of Leipzig pronounced a condemnation of this sort in the year 1529, and in Freistadt eleven women were drowned after a nominal trial and sentence, because they acknowledged that they were of this sect. [3] Amidst these dissensions, and when the empire was in this helpless condition, came the fear of the barbarians of the south, who had already conquered Hungary under their Sultan Soliman, and, whilst the English Sweat was raging in the countries of the Danube, threatened to overwhelm Germany. It was a time of distress and lamentations, in which even the most undaunted could scarcely sustain their courage; [4] but to the everlasting honour of the Germans it must be acknowledged that they withstood this purifying fire with unsullied honour, and in a manner worthy of themselves. For their noble spirits were aroused to unheard-of exertions of energy, and whilst the pusilanimous gave themselves up to despair, they impressed on the gigantic work of their age the stamp of imperishable truth.
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[1] "For all love hath grown cold in all nations; the axe lieth at the root of the tree, the rope is already applied, no one observeth it. For the world is stricken with thick blindness, faith is extinguished. All singleness and Godly fear hath withdrawn from the land for ever, and nothing but false hypocritical make-believe work is to be found among the Baptists, and at most a false, fictitious, fruitless, dead, tottering faith in the other sects, and yet the world thinks, notwithstanding, that she sees and sits in light. In short, for the one devil of the Baptists whom she has driven out, she is beset with seven more subtle and wickeder spirits, though she think that she be freed, and that they be all gone forth." Franck, fol. 248, a. This same Chronicle contains a very lively description of the Peasant-war.
[2] Ad. Clarenbach and Peter Flistedt. &

[3] Schmidt, p. 308.
[4] Nusquam pax, nullum iter tutum est, reriun charitate, penuria, fame, pestilentia laboratur ubique, sectis dissecta sunt omnia: ad tantam malorum lernam accessit letalis sudor, multos intra horas octo tollens e medio, etc. Erasm. Epist. L. XXVI. ep. 8. c.


The siege of Vienna began on the 22nd of September, after the English pestilence had broken out in this capital of Austria, yet nobody regarded this internal danger. The repeated attempts made by the Turks to storm the town were repulsed with great courage, and, on the 16th of October, Soliman raised the siege, after the Sweating Sickness had raged with as much violence among his troops as among the besieged. [1] There is no accurate intelligence extant upon this subject, because the pestilence was less regarded here than elsewhere, in consequence of the great distress of the country from other causes, yet the mortality in Austria, under such unfavourable circumstances, was doubtless more considerable than in the neighbouring states. [2]

In the north of Germany another struggle was to be decided. The evangelical party wished to declare their faith before the empire and its ruler, to reveal the object of their efforts, and to defend the purity of their creed against danger and assault. For this purpose, they prepared themselves with wise discretion, and in the measures taken by the reformers for the fortification of the great work, not the slightest trace was to be observed of the anxiety which at that time agitated the people. In the midst of a country whose inhabitants trembled at the new disease, and were perhaps already severely afflicted with it, did Luther, whilst at Marburg, [3] sketch the first outlines of a profession of faith, which, as filled up by Melanchton, has become the foundation-stone of the evangelical church; and in the following spring, during his stay at Coburg, he composed his sublime hymn, "Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott," a strong fortress is our God.

It could not but happen that, in the religious struggles which took place in these years, especial importance would be attributed to the English pestilence. Epidemics readily appear to man, in the narrow circle of his view, as scourges of God; and, indeed, this representation of them has ever been the prevailing one in all religions. For it is easier to estimate the ever-existing sins of humanity than the grand commotions comprehending both mind and body, of a terrestrial organism, which can only be perceived by a superior insight into things; and the mean selfishness of mankind and their delusions respecting their own qualities induce them to adopt the more easily the partial view, that the Supreme Being allows pestilences to exist only to destroy their enemies of another faith. On this account, not only do most contemporary
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[1] Fuhrmann, Part II. p. 745.
[2] Chronicon Monasterii Mellicensis. In Pez, T. 1. col. 285.
[3] The Assembly of the Reformers began there on the 2nd of October.


writers speak of the just wrath of God, and of the chastisement thus prepared. for the sins of the world, [1] but the papal party took every possible pains to represent the English pestilence as a punishment for heresy and an evident warning against the triumphant doctrines of Luther. The cases in Hamburgh, where the eruption of the Sweating Sickness almost immediately followed the abolition of the monasteries, may certainly have obtained credit for such representations among the wavering and shortsighted, and, in a hundred other towns also, the Papists may have taken advantage of a similar occurrence of circumstances, for 1529 was a year when great and important questions were decided. At Lübeck, the monks in general preached that the English sweating fever was but a punishment which heaven inflicted on the Martineans, for so they called the followers of Luther, and the people were not undeceived until they saw with astonishment that Catholies also fell sick and died. [2] They went, however, much further, and did not hesitate to employ even falsehood and cruel revenge to gain their ends. Thus it was asserted that the meeting of the reformers at Marburg, on the 2nd of October, had led to no union among them, because a panic at the new disease had seized the heretics. 3] Never did a dastardly fear of death enter the heart of Luther, who, when the plague broke out at Wittenberg in 1527, cheerfully and courageously remained at his post whilst all around him fled, and the high school was removed to Jena. Moreover, as we have seen, the Sweating Sickness never once came near Marburg, and the union of the two evangelical churches failed on totally different grounds.

In Cologne the zealots were of opinion that they ought to endeavour to appease the visible wrath of God by the punishment of the heretics, and it was this sanguinary delusion, worthy of savage barbarians, which hastened the burning of Flistedt and Clarenbach. [4] To the completion of this picture of the times, many other minor touches might be added, of which the following may
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[1] The pamphlet written by Magnus Hundt is ornamented with a wood-cut, where, under the throne of God and seated on lions who are spitting forth fire, a great host of angels, armed with swords, are hovering round men, whom they treat worse than Herod's soldiers treated the children of Bethlehem.
[2] Reimar Kock's Chronicle of Lübeck.
[3] Kersenbroick in Sprengel, II. p. 687. Compare Sleidan, L. VI. Tom. I. p. 380, who plainly and simply states the fact.
[4] Culpam em, rei plerique conferebant in theologos concionatores, qui suppliciis impiorum placandam ese clamabant iram Dei, novo morbi genere nos verberantis. Sleidan, loc. cit. p. 380.


be taken as en example. In the March of Brandenburg the evangelical faith, notwithstanding great obstacles, spread every day more and more, and the Catholic priests soon found themselves deserted. Just as the Sweating Sickness broke out at Friedeberg, in the Newmark, a curate there delivered a sermon full of enthusiasm and passion, and endeavoured to convince his apostate congregation that God had invented a new plague in order to chastise the new heresy. A solemn procession, according to ancient usage and orthodox prescription, was to be held on the following day, and thus the congregation was to be led back into the bosom of the only true church. But behold, in the course of the night, the zealous curate died of some sudden disease; and as mankind are ever ready to interpret even the thunders of the Eternal according to their own wishes and narrow notions, the Protestants, it seems, did not fail in their turn to represent this event as a miracle. [1]

SECT. 10.-THE PHYSICIANS.

Under these circumstances, the faculty had a very difficult problem before them, for the very imperfect solution of which they cannot justly be reproached. A learned and active physician is certainly one of the noblest of the diversified forms of humanity; for he unites in himself the power arising from an insight into the works of nature, with the exercise of a pure philanthropy inseparable from his office. Few men, however, of this ideal perfection lived in. those times, and their mitigating influence over the violence of the epidemic, which was generally past before they could closely examine their new enemy and give any deliberate advice, was doubtless but very inconsiderable. By so much the more busy were the ignorant and covetous, who, from time immemorial, the more numerous body in the profession, have always injured it in its moral dignity. They attacked the disease with bold assertions, alarmed the people with inconsiderate representations, lauded the infallibility of their remedies, and were the promulgators of injurious prejudices. In the Netherlands, as we are assured by Tyengius, a physician whom we reckon among the learned and benevolent, a vast number of patients died of the effects produced by the distribution of pernicious pamphlets, with which the Sweating Sickness was to be combated by those ignorant interlopers, who many of them gave
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[1] Haftitz, p. 131. Angelus p. 319. Cramer, Book III. p. 76, and many others.


it out that they had been in England, boasting to the inhabitants of their experience and skill, and with their pills and their "hellish electuaries," flitting about from place to place, [1] especially where rich merchants were to be found, from whom, should they be restored, they obtained the promise of mines of gold. [2] The like occurred in Germany, where, at the commencement, the sound sense of the people was overcome by this officiousness, and violent remedies were recommended as certain means of care, in a deluge of pamphlets, some of which were written by persons not in the profession.
From this impure source was derived the prescription of the compulsory [3] perspiration for twenty-four hours, which, in the districts of the Rhine, was called the Netherlands regimen; [4] and it is unpardonable, that the physicians, either with blind pride disregarded, or were totally unacquainted with the prior experience of the English, which advocated discretion and the most appropriate line of treatment. This neglect, which was not compensated, until thousands had already fallen, may possibly have arisen from the blameable silence of the English physicians, of whom, as if England had not yet been enlightened by the dawn of science, not an individual had written on the Sweating Sickness, or proposed a reasonable line of treatment, since the year 1485. Between England and Germany there existed, nevertheless, a constant intercourse; and it is incredible that that mode of procedure, which did not originate from a formal medical school, but from the sound sense of the people, should not have become earlier known on this side of the North Sea.

We must not here overlook the habits and domestic manners of the Germans, for these favoured not a little the baneful prejudice with regard to heat, for which we would not altogether make the physicians responsible. Housewives, even at that time,
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[1] "Verum quamplurimi, tam nobiles quam populares viri ac mulieres, hoc morbo misere suffocati sunt, ob libellos erroneos, ab indoctissimis hominibus in vulgus emissos, qui in eiusmodi lue curanda peritiam et experientiam jactabant, multosque in Angliâ aliisque regionibus sese curasse dicebant, cum omnia falsa essent. Tales inquam minime pietate fulti erga aegrotos, illorum loculos tantum expilabant, ac in sui commodum convertebant, nullam de aliorum damnis nec morte ipsa curam gerentes, sed quae sua sunt tantum curantes, nulla arte instructi miseros aegros, passim sua ignorantia trucidabant." Forest. L. VI. obs. 8. p. 158. a.
[2] "Ditissimi negociatores, lectis adfixi medicos ad se vocabant, montes anti promittentes, si curarentur." Ditmar, p. 473.
[3] Nam occlusis rimis omnibus, et excitato igne copioso, opertisque stragulis, quo magie tutiusque suderent, aestu praefocati sunt." Forest. loc. cit. p. 157. b.
[4] Wild, in Baldinger, p. 278.


set far too much store by high beds, which annually received the feathers of the geese consumed at the table. The comforts of a warm feather-bed were highly appreciated, and least of all were they disposed to deny them to the sick. Thus all inflammatory disorders were stimulated to much greater malignity, because such a bed either caused a dry heat, even to the extent of burning fever, or a useless debilitating perspiration. To this effect the very extensive misuse of hot baths conduced; and no less so the custom of clothing much too warmly. Upon the whole the notion was prevalent, as well with the people as with medical men, that diseases were to be combated by warmth and sudorifics. To new epidemics, however, the prevailing notions and customs are always applied; for the great mass of mankind, among whom may be included medical men, are entirely ruled by them; so that in this instance, the Sweating Sickness fell upon a country in which its utmost malignity would be called forth.

Yet after the first few days, in which many unfortunate cases occurred, people became aware of the error they had committed. Au advocate of the twenty-four hours' sudation, who, though not a medical man, had lauded this practice in a pamphlet on the subject, [1] died in Zwickau on the 5th of September, the victim of his own imprudence. A few days after him died an apothecary, likewise treated with the heated bed. Upon this the physicians immediately abandoned the practice, directed that their patients should be sweated only for five or six hours, and in a more moderate degree: and the estimable anonymous writer to whom we have already alluded, thus seemed to meet with converts to his belief. In Hamburgh also, men became convinced of the pernicious effects of feather-beds, and gave the preference to coverings of blankets; [2] for the English plan of treatment was presently known, and intelligent philanthropists, who saw its curative powers, made it public [3] in all quarters, through the medium of their correspondence. In Lübeck there lived at the time of the Sweating Fever a learned Protestant Englishman, Dr. Anthony Barns, who, with great kindness, made known everywhere the English treatment of the disease. He was, however, after the cessation of the pestilence, banished the city, because he had petitioned the bigoted Catholic senate to tolerate his Protestant brethren. Many were saved by him; for it was the practice in this city also, to stew to death [4]
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[1] The printer Frantz. Schmidt, p. 307.

[2] Stelzner, Part II. p. 219.
[3] This appears from the Wittenberg regimen.
[4] Reimar Kock's Chronicle of Lübeck.


those affected with the disease. In Stettin the English treatment was promulgated in good time, and two travelling artisans who had come thither from Hamburgh, were of the greatest assistance to the inhabitants of this city, by advising them to take the feathers out of their upper beds; they made known likewise how the sickness had been treated with success. They had seen cases themselves, and could therefore distinguish by their odour those who were suffering from the true sweating epidemic, from those who were seized with fever arising from panic. They were constantly besieged by persons asking questions and seeking assistance; and when the disease was at its greatest height, the streets were quite illuminated at night by the lights of the relatives of the patients, [1] who were running in all directions in a state of distraction. The abhorrence of feather-beds, and the hot plan, now followed so quickly the blind recommendation of the twenty-four hours' sweat, that by the middle of September, and in many places still earlier, more correct views were generally adopted, and some intelligent men, after the sad experience which had been gained, seized the opportunity of doing more good to the public than their noisy predecessors, who had by this time so abundantly supplied the churchyards with bodies. Among these literally and truly beneficent physicians may be reckoned Peter Wild, at Worms, [2] who warned his countrymen against the Netherlands practice; as also an anonymous person (the names of the best often remain unknown in times of confusion), who, in popular language, strenuously dissuaded the people against the use of feather-beds. [4] It also soon
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[1] Klemzen, p. 255.
[2] In Gratoroli: Petrus, proto medicus, fol. 90.

[3] See his pamphlet.
[4] I here give the whole pamphlet, which only occupies five pages. It is entitled, "The Remedy, Advice, Succour, and Consolation against the dreadful, and as yet by us Germans unheard-of, speedy, and mortal Disease, called the English Sweating Sickness, from which may Almighty God mercifully protect us."
"When the disease and sweating sets in, ask what o'clock it is, and note it.
"If any one be afflicted with this pestilence (may God protect us from it!) it attacks him either with heat or with cold, and he will sweat violently; and this will take place all over his body. Some take the disease with sudden eructations, and do not sweat; and to those who do not sweat, a flower of mace with warm beer is given, and then they sweat.
"But if the pestilence and disease, from which may God preserve us! attack any one after he has lain down in bed, he must be left there; but if he has a feather-bed, though a thin one, over him, cut it open and take the feathers out, that it may consist only of the ticking or covering. If it be too thin, add a cool coverlet, and let the patient lie under that, covered up to the neck, and take care that the air do not touch or strike upon his breast, or under his arms, and the soles of his feet, and let him not toss about.
"Item. Two men should attend the patient, to prevent him from uncovering himself, and from going to sleep.
"Item. The same two men must watch the patient, and guard him against sleeping: if they neglect this, and do not so prevent him, and the patient sleep, he will lose his senses, and go raving mad.
"In order, however, that he may be prevented from sleeping, take a little rose-water, and by means of a sponge or clean napkin, bathe his temples with it between the eyes and the ears, and by means of a sponge or napkin, apply pungent wine or beer vinegar to his nose, and talk constantly to him so that he fall not asleep.
"If he would drink, give him a thin beverage, which should be a little warm; and he ought not to be given more than two spoonfuls at a time.
"Item. On the patient's head should be placed a linen night-cap, and a woolen one over it.
"Item. A warm towel should be taken, and with it the sweat wiped from the face. "Item. Whoever is attacked in the day-time must be put to bed; if it be a man, in his stockings and breeches; if a woman, in her clothes; and let them be covered over with not more than two thin coverings; and above all things, no feather-bed; and then treat them as above written.
"Item. The disease attacks most people from great dread and from irregular living, from which a man should guard himself with great pains.
"Once for all, the patient must not have his own way; what he would have you do for him, that must not be done.
"Item. With respect to those whom it attacks in the night, and who lie naked, if they will not lie still, let them be sewn up in the sheets, and let the sheets be sewn to the bed, so that no air can come from beneath; and then cover them as before.
"Summa. Whoever can thus endure for twenty-four hours, by the blessing of God, will be cured of the sickness, and get well.
"If a man has held out for twenty-four hours, let him be taken up, and wrapped in a warm sheet lest he become cold, and throw something over his feet, and bring him to the fire; and, above all things, let him not go into the air for four days, and let him avoid much and cold drink.
"If he would sleep, provided twenty-four hours have been passed, let him sleep freely; and may God preserve him!
"The Lord is Almighty over us! Amen."
The place of publication is wanting. It was probably either Leipzig or Wittenberg.


became a common saying, "The Sweating Sickness will bear no medicine." [1]


There is no ground for supposing that the influence of the faculty was much greater in the country where the Sweating Sickness originated than it was in Germany, for the number of learned physicians there was still fewer, and the knowledge of medicine not nearly so extended as it was in Italy, Germany, and France. The learned Linacre had already died in the year 1524. John Chambre, [2] Edward Wotton, [3] and George Owen, [4] were the King's body physicians about the time of the fourth epidemic visitation of the Sweating Sickness. William Butts, [5] of whom
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[1] Magnus Hundt, fol. 27. a. "Nullis vero aliis medicamentis utuntur adversus ipsam, quam expectatione sudoris, nam quibus advenit, omnes fere evadunt, quibus autem retinetur, maxima pars perit." Forest. loc. cit. p. 159. a. Schol.
[2] Born about 1483; died 1549.

[3] Born 1492; died 1555

[4] Died 1558.
[5] Died 1545. "Vir gravis; eximia litterarum cognitione, singulari judicio, summa experientia, et prudenti consilio Doctor." Aikin, p. 47.


Shakespeare [1] has made honourable mention, in all probability likewise held a similar office. These were certainly distinguished and worthy men, [2] but posterity has gained nothing from them on the subject of the English Sweating Sickness. All these physicians were well informed, zealous, and doubtless also cautious followers of the ancient Greek school of medicine, but their merits were of no advantage to the people, who, when they departed from the dictates of their own understanding, and did not content themselves with domestic remedies, to which they had been accustomed, fell into the hands of a set of surgeons so rude and ignorant that they could only exist in the state of society which they prevailed. [3]
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[1] In Henry VIII.

[2] See their biography, in Aikin.
[3] Thomas Gale's description of this class of medical practitioners gives the best notion of their abilities. "I remember," says he, "when I was in the wars at Montreuil (1544), in the time of that most famous Prince, Henry VIII., there was a great rabblement there, that took upon them to be surgeons. Some were sow gelders, and some horse gelders, with tinkers and cobblers. This noble sect did such great cures, that they got themselves a perpetual name; for like as Thessalus' sect were called Thessalions, so was this noble rabblement, for their notorions cures, called dog-leeches; for in two dressings they did commonly make their cures whole and sound for ever, so that they neither felt heat for cold, nor no manner of pain after. But when the Duke of Norfolk, who was then general, understood how the people did die, and that of small wounds, he sent for me and certain other surgeons, commanding us to make search how these men came to their death, whether it were by the grievousness of their wounds, or by the lack of knowledge of the surgeons, and we, according to our commandment, made search through all the camp, and found many of the same good fellows which took upon them the names of surgeons, not only the names, but the wages also. We asking of them whether they were surgeons or no, they said they were; we demanded with whom they were brought up, and they, with shameless faces, would answer, either with one cunning man, or another, which was dead. Then we demanded of them what chirurgery stuff they had to cure men withal; and they would show us a pot or a box, which they had in a budget, wherein was such trumpery as they did use to grease horses' heels withal, and laid upon scabbed horses' backs, with verval and such like. And others that were cobblers and tinkers, they used shoemakers' wax, with the rust of old pans, and made therewithal a noble salve, as they did term it. But in the end this worthy rabblement was committed to the Marshals, and threatened by the Duke's Grace to be hanged for their worthy deeds, except they would declare the truth, what they were and of what occupations, and in the end they did confess, as I have declared to you before."
In another place Gale says, "I have, myself, in the time of King Henry VIII., holpe to furnish out of London, in one year, which served by sea and land, threescore and twelve surgeons, which were good workmen, and well able to serve, and all English men. At this present day there are not thirty-four, of all the whole company, of Englishmen, and yet the most part of them be in noblemen's service, so that if we should have need, I do not know where to find twelve sufficient men. What do I say? sufficient men: nay, I would there were ten amongst all the company, worthy to be called surgeons."

SECT. 11.-PAMPHLET'S.

Inexplicable as the silence of the learned physicians of England, on the Sweating Sickness, appears at first view, (for where is the use of learning if it fail to throw any light on the stormy phenomena of life?) we may yet find, perhaps, its cause in a perfectly simple external circumstance. The Reformation had not yet begun in England, the Catholic Church still stood on its ancient foundations, and an intellectual intercourse between the learned and the people was not by any means among the acknowledged desiderata. The faculty would hence have been able to treat of the new disorder only in ponderous Latin works, for they wrote unwillingly in their own language, and the subject could not seem to them an appropriate one for this purpose, because they found it unnoticed and uninvestigated by their highly revered masters the Greeks. They were ignorant that a sweating fever had ever appeared among the ancients, which, otherwise, might have incited them to make researches of their own on the subject; for Aurelian, who describes it to the life, was either unknown to them, or, what at that time was a valid ground, was despised by them, on account of his bad (unclassical) language.

In Germany, on the contrary, the intellectual wants of the people and of the educated classes had already manifested themselves very differently. Twelve years before, the age of pamphlets had there commenced. The thoughts of Luther and of his disciples, as also of his opposers, were winged by the rapid press, and the people took an impassioned part in the endeavours of the learned to effect their conviction, and by this altogether novel and authoritative mode of religious instruction, became gradually educated and guided. Hence it is not to be wondered at that people began to investigate, in pamphlets, other important subjects likewise, and thus we see this weighty branch of intellectual commerce, with all its advantages and defects, also turned towards the discussion of popular diseases, and for the first time unfolding its numerous leaves on the subject of the English epidemic. In the maritime cities nothing of this kind happened, because the eruption of the pestilence took them by surprise, and as it was over again in the course of a few weeks, it seemed no longer worth while to instruct the people respecting it.

This surprise was very plainly known in the answer of the doctors and licentiates who were assembled together at the bedside of the Duchess, at Stettin: "the disease was new and unknown to them: they were at a loss what to advise, excepting strengthening medicines." [1] In the central parts of Germany, on the contrary, where, as early as the month of August, the report of the new plague had excited the utmost alarm, and where an eruption of the pestilence in Zwickau had caused a general flight, publications on the Sweating Sickness were even within that month, and still more numerously in September, disseminated in all directions. As scientific productions, they are almost all of them worthless. Many of them, indeed, did harm, and but very few promulgated correct views. Most of them are now lost, as, for example, that which was published by the printer Frantz, at Zwickau, on the 3rd of September: but in what vast numbers they were published appears from the circumstance that Dr. Bayer, at Leipzig, who brought out his own on the 4th of September, states that he has read many of them, and expresses his indignation against these "new unfounded little books," by which the people were misled to their own sorrow and suffering. [2] This same Dr. Bayer writes in the style of an intelligent practical physician, inveighs boldly against the prejudices of mankind, and the ignorance of medical journeymen, and against their senseless bleedings whenever they see the barber's basin and his pole. Some of his advice too is not bad, especially where he is speaking of the Arabian use of harmless syrups. He, however, religiously preserves all the rubbish of his age, and has a great opinion of preventive bleedings, purgatives, and powerful medicines, of which he prescribes so many that his reader is necessarily confused by their multiplicity. His precepts respecting the sweat are very appropriate, for he gives a caution against forcing perspiration, prescribes according to the circumstances, and even commences the treatment with an emetic, if the state of the stomach seems to indicate its employment. In order to guard against contagion, he recommends, at the approaching autumnal fair, that foreigners from "dying lands" should be accommodated in distinct inns, that fumigation should be carefully employed, and that before each booth at the fair a fire should be kept up.

Another pamphlet by Caspar Kegeler, of Leipzig, is a melancholy monument of the credulity which, from Herophilus to the present day, has pervaded the whole medical art. It is a regular pharmacopoeia for the Sweating Sickness, thrown together at a venture, without any insight into the nature of the disease.
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[1] Klemzen, p. 255.

[2] Part I. cap. 8.


A same of wonderful pills and electuaries composed of numberless ingredients wherewith this "mysterious worthy" undertakes to raise a commotion in the bodies of his patients. If he had but seen even a single case of the disease he would at least have known how impossible it would be to administer, within the space of four-and-twenty hours, the hundredth part of his pills and draughts. With what approbation this little pharmacopoeia was received by physicians of equal penetration and understanding as himself, is shown by the eight editions which it passed through, [1] and the melancholy reflection is therefore forced upon us, that possibly thousands of sick persons were maltreated and sacrificed from the employment of Kegeler's medicines.

A third physician at Leipzig, Dr. John Heilwetter, states in his pamphlet, that he has become acquainted with the Sweating Fever in foreign countries, and on the subject of perspiration gives some very good advice, evidently the result of his own experience, which reminds us of the original English mode of treatment. His notion that fish is injurious seems to have originated in the fact that the continued employment of fish as an article of diet gives rise to offensive perspirations, and his admonition to his medical brethren not to flee from the sick, but to visit them sedulously and give them consolation, furnishes ground for supposing that some of them had been pusillanimous and dishonourable enough to withdraw themselves or to refuse their assistance to the peer.

Almost all the medical men of these times were in possession of arcana, which they employed either in all or at least in most diseases, in a very unprofessional manner, and the efficacy of which the sweet delusions of self-interest did not permit them to call in question. The severe metallic remedies of the Spagyric school, which was then in its infancy, were not yet introduced, but there were not wanting strong heating medicines from the ancient stores of the empyrics, which almost universally obtained the preference over the mild potions and syrups of the Arabians. Heilwetter sold a powder of unknown composition, and a number of distilled waters, which Dr. Magnus Hundt, of Leipzig, notices with much approbation. The pamphlet of this physician is in every respect of the most ordinary kind; it affords no proof that the author had any sound comprehension of the disease, and belongs to that class of low medical compositions which, in times of danger, is so easily derided by the public, and so much diminishes
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[1] Gruner, Script. p 11.


the estimation of the profession, to the material injury of the general welfare.

It must not, however, be supposed that the people, who in such times of commotion often confound together the good and the bad, listened everywhere so readily to these pamphleteers. The composition of one Dr. Klump, at Ueberlingen, who, on the breaking out of the disease, attacked his patients with theriac and all kinds of heating plague powders, excited great derision, [1] and it cannot be denied that the people had on their side, at least occasionally, the advantage of sound sense, as opposed to the endless prescriptions of the physicians, and, it is gratifying to observe how this sound sense, which doubtless was guided by respectable medical men, operated in a great many towns to the advantage of those affected.

This is proved by a pamphlet, written in popular language, by a physician in Wittenberg, [2] which contains such correct medical views, that our highest approbation is, even now, justly due to its unknown author, as showing, throughout, great judgment and a very competent knowledge of the Sweating Fever. His whole treatment is mild and cautious; he forbids the use of feather-beds, but strongly inculcates the necessity of avoiding every kind of chill, and therefore recommends a practice in use at that time, called "the sewing of the sick," that is to say, fastening the edge of the bed clothes to the bed with a needle and thread. He orders his patients a moderate quantity of warm but not heating beverage, [3] refreshes them with syrup of roses, and impresses upon his readers that the majority of those affected will recover without medicine. In order to guard against the stupor which was so exceedingly fatal, in addition to continual conversation, refreshing odours of rose water and aromatic vinegar were held before the patients' nose, in a moderately damp cloth, or their temples were cautiously bathed with them. Convalescents were watched with great care, and it is not the least excellence of this very sterling pamphlet that it likewise combated the timidity of the sick with the inculcation of mild, but manly, religious principles, such as corresponded with the spirit of that age. The rules here

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[1] "Vix malevolorum cachinnos morsusque praeteriit" Schiller, Epist. nuncupator, the title which Gruner, Script. p. 12, gives to the original work, still existing in the library at Strasburg, and a Latin extract from it. Gratoroli, fol 39.
[2] See the Catalogue in the Appendix, "Ein Regiment," &c.
[3] Any kind of weak beer with the chill off. Warm beer was a beverage in general use in the north of Germany. The beer of Eimbeck and Bernau was stronger, and was recommended by medical men during the convalescence.


laid down are, in essentials, the original English precepts, which had already broken the force of the epidemic Sweating Sickness in the year 1485, and the author does not conceal his having in this matter received information from Hamburgh, so far back as the 7th of August. That by this mode of treatment not only individual patients [1] were saved, but also that whole cities were protected against any very great mortality, we are willing with the author to believe, and on this account we cannot but lament the more, that the medical science of the rigid schools of those days so completely mistook its office as the guardian of life, and that it caused greater sacrifices by its hazardous remedies than the pestilence would otherwise have occasioned.

How soon the English treatment met with the recognition which it deserved may be gathered from a Latin composition nearly of the same tenour as the above, and which appears to be an extract from some German pamphlets. [2] Besides aromatic odoriferous waters, the very harmless and only remedies therein recommended are pearls and corals given internally by tablespoonfuls in warm rose water. As a prophylactic, treacle, which was in very common use, was recommended to be taken in the juice of roasted onions, but only in very small doses. Similar just views with respect to the excitement of perspiration were also subscribed to by other physicians, [3] and finally the great council at Berne, on the 18th of December, published an exhortation to patience and unshaken courage, in which the use of feather-beds and of all medicines, except cinnamon water, was earnestly deprecated [4] during the disease. The court of Holland also recommended a method of cure [5] apparently English, these two documents being the only traces, on the part of any governments, of a paternal solicitude for their subjects.

The learned and accomplished Euricius Cordus,[6] of Marburg, had, when he wrote, [7] no information respecting the successful English mode of treatment, and, with all his celebrity, only followed in the ranks of ordinary advisers. He could not free himself from the medical precepts which he brought from Italy, and
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[1] "I had in my house seven lying ill with the same disease, of which, thank God, none died." From the letter of an inhabitant of Hamburgh, given in the same pamphlet, "Ein Regiment," &e.
[2] Gratorol. fol. 87. b.

[3] Gratorol. fol. 90.
[4]Stettler, Part II. p. 33.

[5] Wagenaar, op. cit. p. 509.
[6] His proper name was Henry Spaten (German Spät, in English late), whereof Cordus (the last born or late-born) seems to have been a translation.
[7] The second of September.


gave to the only patient at Marburg, who was the subject of the Sweating Sickness, the very disagreeable, though much-employed, potion of "Benedetto." His prophylactic ordinances were very burthensome, though with respect to the frequent employment of purgatives, which at that time almost all physicians recommended, it must be taken into account, that the intemperance, so prevalent in these days, rendered them in general more necessary, perhaps, than they are at the present time. Bishop Ditmar of Merseburg has betrayed to posterity, that this celebrated man had a great dread of the new disorder, and did not conceal his anxiety. [2]

There is still extant a very complicated prescription of Achilles Gasser,[3] the learned physician of Augsburg, which he employed with childish confidence [4] during the prevalence of the sweating pestilence. We might class this with a thousand others of a similar character, were it not evident how little medical art, at that time in its ancient Greek garb, was suited to the exigency of the age, being dull, inefficient, and long since robbed of its original spirit; for thus alone was it taught in the universities.

In the copious epistle of Simon Riquinus to the Count of Newenar at Cologne, [5] traces of better principles are indeed observable, which were soon disseminated from Hamburgh all over Germany, yet the prophylactic measures recommended are not much better than those in use in the time of the Emperor Antoninus, when the Theriaca of Andromachus was among the necessaries at the Roman court. Riquinus incidentally tells a story of a peasant in the neighbourhood of Cleve, who, having become affected by the English Sweating Sickness, crept as quickly as he could into a baker's oven that was still hot, and after some time again made his appearance in an exhausted state. [6] This very circumstance
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[1] R Pulveris cardiaci (very complex, containing precious stones and many other ingredients), 3ij; Pulveris cornu cervi 3j; Seminis Santonici, Myrrha, aa 3fl. M. ft. Pulv. Sum. 3j; in warm wine-vinegar.
[2] Chronicle, p. 473.

[3] Born 1505; died 1577,
[4] It is the Electuarium liberans Gassen :-R Spec. liberant. Galen, Spec. de gemm. aa 3j, Pulveris Dictamn., Tormentill, Serpentinae, aa 3iv, Pimpinell. Zedoariae. aa 3fl, Bol. Armen, lot.; Term. sigillat. aa 3ij Rasur. Cornu cervin. 3j, Zingiber. 3j, Conserv. Rosar, rec. fl, Theriac. veteris 3j, Syrup. acetositatis citri. q. s. ut ft. electuar. spiss.-Velsch, p. 19.-Gasser states in his Augsburg Chronicle, that there were more than 3000 cases of the disease there, but that not more than 600 died. See Mencken, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum.
[5] Gratorol. fol. 74. b.
[6] Gratorol. fol. 85. Probably this epistle does not differ essentially from the Latin work of this author on the sweating fever which appeared separately. (De ιδροπυρετου, seu sudatoria febris curatione Liber. Coloni, 1529. 4.)


proves that the man laboured under only an imaginary and not a real sweating fever, but the belief that the bread which was afterwards baked in this oven was infected with the poison, can only be attributed to the credulity of the learned physician.

The Count of Newenar [1] expresses himself on the subject of the sweating fever, like a person well informed, and not unacquainted with medical subjects, and endeavours to prove the critical nature of the sweat by the frequent practice of the empyrics, to throw persons afflicted with the plague, at the very beginning of the attack, into a profuse perspiration. [2] He takes the opportunity to relate of an unprincipled physician, that he freed himself in this manner from the plague, in a public bath, while those who came after him became every one of them affected with the disease, and died. According to his account, the English Sweating Sickness was by no means fatal in and about Cologne, [3] yet we find it with all its original malignity on the banks of the Scheldt, and in the maritime towns of the Netherlands.

This plainly appears from the pamphlet of a physician in great practice at Ghent, Tertius Damianus, from Vissenaecken, near Tirlemont, [4] whose own wife fell sick of the sweating fever, and fortunately was again restored. [5] The cases whereof Damianus gives an account, are among the most marked of which any mention is made, and it also seems that the disease, contrary to the opinion of many, arose from fear alone, and manifested in the Netherlands a much greater power of contagion than in Germany, to which the hot treatment may have contributed. [6] The manner in which Damianus restrained his patients from indulging in their propensity to sleep, is worthy of notice. When the usual means failed, he directed that their hair should be torn out, that their limbs should be tied together in painful positions, and that vinegar should be dropped into their eyes: the danger justified these means, but violence does not easily attain its end. For the rest, the views of this physician do not differ from those commonly entertained, and if he complains [8] of the great extortions of the apothecaries, this was a natural effect of the customary prescriptions, whereof he himself recommends many that are very objectionable.

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[1] Gratorol. fol. 64.

[2] Gratorol. fol. 69. b.
[3] Videmus, quam multi de sudore convalescant, fol. 66. a.
[4] This town is called in Flemish Tienen (Then in Montibus), translated by Damianus Decicopolis. [5] Fo1. 117. a.

[6] Fol. 109. a.

[7] Fol. 116. b.
[8] Fol. 118. a. Damianus wrote his, by no means unimportant, treatise during the prevalence of the epidemic sweating fever in Ghent.


Whatever the science of medicine of the sixteenth century could oppose to so fearful an enemy, is set forth in the very excellent treatise of Joachim Schiller [1] of Frieburg, which, however, did not appear until two years later, and unfortunately does not give the wished-for information on the development of the pestilence in the Briesgau. Schiller is moderate in his views, and shows throughout, that he is a very well-informed physician, and well versed in Greek literature; and although he cannot steer clear of the rubbish of clumsy remedies, yet the fault should not be charged on him, but on the age in which he lived. This, like every other, had its evils, and enveloped in clouds and darkness the genius of medicine, which, free, great, and elevated above human short-sightednes, is respected only by the intellectual servants of nature.

SECT. 12.-FORM OF THE DISEASE.

The notions of the contemporary writers respecting the phenomena and the course of the sweating epidemic are, it is true, individually unsatisfactory and defective; [2] yet, collectively, we may gather from them a lively and complete picture of its effect on the human frame; especially from the German observers, who reported truly and honestly their own, as well as the general experience of their age; for the English had up to that period described little more than the external appearances of this epidemic, which had already attacked them for the fourth time.

It is ascertained that the Sweating Fever was in general very inflammatory; and, leaving out of the account its sequel, came to a crisis at most in four and twenty hours; yet within this narrow limit as to time, very various symptoms occurred, [3] so that by a more exact observation than could be expected from the physicians of those days, several gradations of its development and violence might have been distinguished from each other. Thus one form of this disease appeared that was wanting in precisely that symptom which was the most essential, namely, the colliquative sweating [4] (as in the most dangerous form of cholera, neither
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[1] He styles himself Schiller von Herderen, from an estate in the village of that name close to Freiburg.
[2] Schiller says with great naiveté, "that the symptoms of the disease are evident, and that those which he has not indicated must be imagined." Sect. II. c. 1. fol. 206.
[3] "Habet inconstantea notas morbus." SchilIer. "Diversos diversimode adoritur." Damian. fol. 115. b.
[4]See above, the remedium, p. 248, note 4. Sudoris absentia plurimum nocebat. -Forest. p. 158. Schol.


vomiting nor purging takes place), and which, by its overpowering attack, either destroyed life within a few hours, or perhaps took some other turn of a nature unknown to us.

Premonitory symptoms were wanting altogether, unless we may reckon as such, first, an anguish, combined with palpitation of the heart, which may not have been of corporeal origin, but may have proceeded from the general alarm; or secondly, an irresistible sinking of the powers resembling a swoon, which, perhaps, preceded the disorder, in the same manner as it had preceded the general eruption of the plague in northern Germany: [1] or thirdly, rheumatic pains of various kinds, which were frequently felt in the summer of 1529; [2] or finally, a disagreeable taste in the mouth and foul breath, which were very commonly the subject of complaint at that time. [3]

In most instances the disease set in like the generality of fevers, with a short shivering fit [4] and trembling, which in very malignant cases even passed into convulsions of the extremities; [5] in many it began with a moderate and constantly increasing heat, [6] either without any evident occasion, even in the midst of sleep, so that the patients on waking lay in a state of perspiration, or from a state of intoxication, and during hard work, [7] especially in the morning at sunrise. [8] Many patients experienced at the commencement a disagreeable creeping sensation of formication on their hands and feet, [9] which passed into pricking pains, and an exceedingly painful sensation under the nails. At times likewise it was combined with rheumatic cramps, and with such a weariness in the upper part of the body, that the sufferers were totally incapable of raising their arms.[10] Some were seen during these attacks, especially women and those who were weak, with their hands and feet swollen. [11]

Serious affections of the brain quickly followed; many fell into a state of violent feverish delirium, [12] and these generally died. [13]
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[1] See above, p. 227. Klemzen, p. 254.
[2] Bayer, cap. 6. M. Hund, fol. 5. a.

[3] Bayer, loc. cit.
[4] Angelus, p. 319. Schiller, Stettler, locis cit. and many others.
[5] Damian. Fol. 115. b.

[6] Schiller, loc. cit.
[7]  The Regimen of Wittenberg.

[8] Damian. fol. 115. b.
[9] Klemzen, p. 255.
[10] "Ungues potissimum excruciat, alas ita comprimit, ut etiam al velis, non posses attollere." Forest. p. 157. Schol. "In extremitatibus puncturis retorquentur dolorosis-extremitates obstupefiunt, dolet orificium ventriculi, nervorum contractiones nascuntur, plantarum pedumque dolores."-Damian. fol. 116. a.
[11] Damian. loc. cit.

[12] Klemzen, loc. cit.
[13] "Nec quenquam vidimus ita delirantem restitutum incolumitati."-Damian. fol. 116. a.


All complained of obscure pain in the head; [1] and it was not long before an alarming lethargy supervened, [2] which, if it was not firmly resisted, led to inevitable death by apoplexy. Thus the unconscious sufferers were, at least, relieved from the pain of separation from their friends, which would have been much more distressing to them in this than in any other complaint, since they lay, as it were, in a stinking swamp, tortured with suffering.

This mortal anguish accompanied them so long as they were in possession of their senses, throughout the whole disease. [3] In many the countenance was bloated and livid, or at least the lips and cavities of the eyes were of a leaden tint; whence it evidently appears, that the passage of the blood through the lungs was obstructed in the same way as in violent asthma; [4] hence they breathed with great difficulty, as if their lungs were seized with a violent spasm or incipient paralysis; at the same time, the heart trembled and palpitated constantly under the oppressive feeling of inward burning, which, in the most malignant cases, flew to the head, and excited fatal delirium. [5] In the course of a short time, and in many cases at the very commencement, the stinking sweat broke out in streams over the whole body, either proving salutary when life was able to obtain the mastery over the disease, or prejudicial when it was subdued by it-as is the case in every ineffectual effort of nature to produce a cure. And in this respect, as in diseases of less importance, great differences appeared according to the constitution of the patient; for some perspired very easily, others, on the contrary, with great difficulty, especially the phlegmatic, who, in consequence, were threatened with the greatest danger. [6]

In this severe struggle the spinal marrow was sometimes, at a later stage, so much affected, that even convulsions came on; and it happened not unfrequently, that, in consequence of the constriction of the chest, the stomach indicated its excited condition by nausea and vomiting.[7] These symptoms, however, manifested

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[1] Schiller, Stettler.
[2] Somnolentia et inevitabilis sopor, Schliler; a deep sleep, in almost all the chroniclers.
[3]  Schiller.
[4] "Aliis mox tument manus et pedes, alla facies, quae et in pluribus livet; nonnullis sola labia et superciliorum loca: mulieribus etiam inguina inflantur."-Damian. fol. 116. a.
[5] "Maximus denique calor haud procul a corde sentitur, qui ad cerebrum devolans delirium adducit, internecionis nuncium."-Damian. loc. cit.
[6] Damian. loc. cit.
[7] Schiller, loc. cit.


themselves principally in those who were attacked with the disease upon a full stomach.

Such is the testimony of the contemporary writers of 1529, to whose accounts but little is added by Kaye, an English eye-witness of the epidemic Sweating Sickness of 1551. The observations of this perfectly trustworthy physician, so far as they relate to the form of the disorder, may be here annexed, since no essential differences between the diseases on these two occasions can be discovered. At the first onset the diseases in some attacked the neck or shoulders, and in others one leg or one arm, with dragging pains; [1] others felt at the same time a warm glow that spread itself over the limbs, immediately after which, without any visible cause, the perspiration broke out accompanied by constant and increasing heat of the inward parts, gradually extending towards the surface. The patients suffered from a very quick and irritable pulse [2] and great thirst, and threw themselves about in the utmost restlessness. Under the violent headache which they suffered, they frequently fell into a talkative state of wandering, yet this did not generally happen before the ninth hour, and in very various gradations of mental aberration, [3] after which the drowsiness commenced. In others the sweating was longer delayed, while, in the mean time, a slight rigor of the limbs existed: it then broke out profusely, but did not always trickle down the skin in equal abundance, but alternately, sometimes more, sometimes less. It was thick and of various colours, but in all cases of a very disagreeable odour, [4] which, when it broke out again, after any interruption to its flow, was still more penetrating. [5]

Kaye adds to what we already know of the oppression of the chest, the very important statement that those affected were observed to have a whining, sighing voice, whence we have every reason to conclude that there was a serious affection of the eighth pair of nerves. He, moreover, describes a very mild form
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[1] "Primo insultu aliis cervices aut scapulas, aliis crus ant brachium occupavit," p. 15. Kaye does not state what he precisely means by this "occupare." From an analogous more modern observation, it appears, however, that by it are meant tearing rheumatic pains. "Add to this, that the patients complained one and all, some more some less, of a tearing pain in the neck." Sinner, p. 10.
[2] Pulsus concitatior, frequentior. The only remark upon the pulse which is to be found in all the writers. Caius, p. 16. Probably most of the physicians were afraid of contagion, and on this account omitted to examine the pulse.
[3] Page 252.
[4] Odoris teterrimi. Tyengius in Forest. p. 158.
[5] Newenar, fol. 72. b.


of the disease, such as was prevalent in the south of Germany in 1529. It passed off under proper care, without any danger, in the very short period of fifteen hours, and was brought to a termination by moderate heat through the medium of a very gentle perspiration. [1]

It is remarkable that during this violent disorder neither the activity of the kidneys nor the evacuation by stool was entirely interrupted, for there passed continually turbid and dark urine, although, as may be conceived, in small quantity and with great uncertainty as to the prognosis; whereupon those physicians who judged by the urine were not a little perplexed. [2] It was observed, too, sometimes in the more easily curable cases, that patients at the moment when the perspiration broke out upon them passed urine in great quantity, [3] on which account a French physician proposed to draw off the water in those who suffered from this disease; [4] yet this practice has no higher therapeutical worth than the excitement of perspiration in diabetes or in cholera, and is, moreover, much less practicable. That occasionally diarrhoea supervened, and even to a degree which was not to be restrained, may be gathered from the frequent medical directions as to how it ought to be arrested, which Kaye also repeats. [5] In some patients, likewise, nature appears to have effected a simultaneous crisis by the skin, the kidneys, and the bowels.

Much more important, however, is the observation of a respectable Dutch physician, that after the perspiration was over there appeared on the limbs small vesicles,[6] which were not confluent, but rendered the skin uneven, and these were not noticed by any other medical observer, but are spoken of by the author of an old Hamburgh chronicle, and, with this addition, that they have been seen on the dead. By these it is very likely that a
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[1] Page 190.

[2] Schiller, Kaye, loc. cit.
[3] -" cum alvi solutione ac lotii haud modica eiectione, in ea morbi specie, quae curatum itura est." Damian. Fol. 116. a.
[4] Rondelet, de dignosc. morbis, loc. cit.
[5] To avoid exposure to cold, they preferred allowing the patient to pass his evacuations in bed. Bed.pans were unknown. Kaye, p. 110, and most of the other writers.
[6] Tyengius in Forest. p. 158. b. "Febrem sudor finiebat, post se reliquens in extremitatibus corporis, pustulas parvas, admodum exasperantes diversas et malignas secundum humorum malignitatem."
[7] When care was not taken that the hands and feet were kept under the clothes they died, and their bodies became as black as a coal all over, and were covered with vesicles, and stunk so, that it was necessary to bury them dep in the earth by reason of the stench. Staphorst, Part II. VoL 1. p. 83.


miliary eruption, and perhaps spots also, are to be understood; yet everything militates against the supposition that this phenomenon was constant, or that the Sweating Fever was an eruptive disorder. [1] For in that case, some mention would have been made of it in the numerous accounts of historians, many of whom, doubtless, had themselves seen the disease, and the eruptions would have been more evidently and decidedly formed in the numerous relapses of those who recovered. They certainly indicate a relationship with the miliary fever, but only in so far as that both diseases are of rheumatic origin, and this slight participation in the nature of an eruptive disease would seem to have been observed in the English Sweating Sickness only in perfectly isolated cases. What would have taken place under such an indication had the Sweating Sickness run a longer course, whether, in fact, it might not possibly have passed into a regular miliary fever, is a question unsolved by the past, since even later transitions of this kind have never been observed. The two diseases are, both in their course and their nature, perfectly distinct from each other, and the miliary fever was not developed as an independent epidemic until the following century, under circumstances altogether different, and its more decided precursors are not to be discovered until a period posterior to the five eruptions of the Sweating Sickness.

The powers of the constitution were much shaken by the Sweating Sickness, so that a rapid recovery was observed to take place only in the mildest form of this disease. Those, however, whom it attacked more severely, remained very feeble and powerless for at least a week, and their restoration was but gradual, and effected only by great care and strengthening diet. After the perspiration had passed off, the patient was taken carefully from his bed, cautiously dried in a warm chamber, placed by the fireside, and, as a first restorative, usually fed with egg soup, yet the generality could not entirely get over the effects of the fever for a long time. Those who had recovered could seldom go out so early as the second or third day. [2]
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[1] Spots (maculae quas ronchas (?) vocant), which were on other occasions considered as signs of approaching death, or which did not come out until death had occurred, broke out, after a return of sweating which had been repressed, all over the body of the learned Margaretha Roper, the eldest daughter of Thomas More, who was the subject of sweating fever in 1517 or 1528, and recovered. Th. Stapleton, Vita et obitus Thomae Mori, c. 6. p. 26. See Mori Opera.
[2] And certainly only after very appropriate and careful treatment. Se the Wittenberg Regimen, Kaye, loc. cit. Schmidt, p. 307, and Klemzen, p. 256.


Those patients were placed in still greater danger in whom the perspiration was in any way suppressed: most of them were consigned to inevitable death (the popular voice ever since the year 1485 confirms this). Over those, however, in whom the powers of life were roused to a renewed effort, there broke out, after a short period, a new perspiration far more offensive than the first; so that the body dripped as it were with a foul fluid, and it seemed as if the inward parts wanted to disburthen themselves at once of their putridity by an immoderate effort. [1] It is clear that this repetition of the attack must have been destructive to many who, had it not been for an obstruction of the crisis, would have been saved; for nothing is more dangerous in inflammatory diseases than when those secretions are interrupted which Nature has ordained as the only means of relief.

Relapses were frequent, because convalescents, after the disease was subdued, remained for a long time very excitable. These were seen for the third and fourth time seized with the Sweating Sickness [2] nay, later writers notice a repetition of the disease even to the twelfth time, [3] whereby at least the health was completely shattered, for dropsy or some other destructive sequelae supervened, until death put a period to incurable sufferings, and it is important to observe that even the bowels participated in the great excitability of the system, for too early an exposure to the air easily brouqht en diarrhoea. [4]

How great the decomposition of the organic matter was is convincingly proved from all the testimony hitherto adduced, but it might have been inferred from the very rapid putrefaction of the body, which rendered it necessary everywhere to use the greatest despatch in the performance of burials; and fortunately did away with all fear of being buried alive. Of post mortem examinations we have no information, and even if they could have been instituted, they would, from the manner of conducting researches in those times, scarcely have thrown any important light on the disease. Hardly any physicians but those who had studied in Italy knew the inward structure of the body from their own observation, superficial as it was; the rest learned it only from Galenic manuals; how could they with such slender knowledge have distinguished
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[1] Newenar, fol. 72. b.
[2] Erasm. Epist. L. XXVI. Ep. 58 p. 1477. b. "Et crebro quos reliquit brevi intervallo repetens, nec id semel, sed bis, ter, quater, donec in hydropem aut aliud morbi genus versus, tandem extinguat miseris excarnificatum modis."
[3] Kaye, p. 110.

[4] Idem. p. 113.
[5] Staphorst, Part II. Vol. 1. p. 83.


between healthy and diseased parts? Moreover, the Sweating Sickness could not in so short a period cause such a palpable and substantial destruction of the viscera as they would alone have sought for. Details respecting the condition of the blood in the dead body, which after such an enormous loss of watery fluid, such severe oppression at the chest, and so great an impediment to the function of respiration, would in all probability be thickened and darkened in colour, as well as respecting the condition of the lungs and of the heart, it would be highly desirable to obtain; but these likewise are wanting altogether, and after the lapse of so long a period there only remains room for conjectures.

The observation was repeated in Germany which had been so frequently made since the year 1485, that the middle period of life was especially exposed to the Sweating Fever. Children, on the contrary, remained almost entirely exempt from this disease, and when the aged were affected by it, it was as individual exceptions to a general rule, [1] and this, as it would appear, only during the height of the epidemic; as for example at Zwickau, where a woman of 112 years of age was carried off by it. [2] We have already in part discovered the cause of this perfectly constant phenomenon in the luxurious mode of living of robust young men, and if we look back to the moral condition of the Germans in the 16th century, we find among them the same immoderate luxury as among the English, the same drunkenness, the same intemperance at their frequent banquets, where the wine-cups and beer-jugs were emptied with but too eager draughts; finally, also, the same relaxation of skin consequent upon the use of warm baths and warm clothing. All contemporary writers mention these circumstances, [3] and our bold forefathers, with respect to these matters, were not in the best repute with their southern neighbours.

But we have, moreover, to survey the disease in another point of view, namely, in relation to its peculiar character. In the outset we designated the Sweating Sickness as a rheumatic fever, and if we take the notion of a rheumatic affection, as in propriety we ought, in its widest acceptation, weighty and convincing grounds
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[1] "Immunes erant pueri et senes ah hoc malo." Ditmar, p. 473. "Pueri infra decem annos rarissime hac febre corripiuntur." Newenar, fol. 72. a. "Senibus solis quandoque pepercit,-praeternavigavit etiam magna ex parte atrabilarios et emaciatos corpore, quoniam et horum corpora putris succi expertia erant." Schiller, fol. 4. a.
[2]  Schmidt, p. 307.
[3] As for instance, Schiller, to name but one among thousands. "Juvit etiam auxitque malum frequens multaque crapula, et in potationibus otiosa vita nostra," fol. 3. b.


have been adduced in the course of our whole inquiry in confirmation of this view. When we observe that these very nations were visited by the Sweating Fever, which are characterised by a fair skin, blue eyes, and light hair-the marks of the German race, it may with justice be assumed, that even this peculiarity in the structure of the body rendered it susceptible of this extraordinary disease. It is this which causes the proneness to fluxes of all kinds, and which makes these diseases endemic in the north of Europe, whilst the dark-haired southern nations and the blacks in the tropical climates remain, under similar circumstances, [1] more free from them. If it be remembered further how overcharged. with water were the lower strata of the atmosphere in which the pestilent Sweating Fevers existed, what thick and even offensive mists prepared the way for the disease and indicated its approach, what rapid alternations of freezing cold and excessive heat took place in the summer of 1529; and, moreover, how frequent all kinds of fluxes were in this very year, the complete form of the rheumatic constitution will be recognised in every individual feature.

Did we possess in the showy systems of modern times a maturer knowledge of the electricity of living bodies, much light would of necessity hence be thrown on the great object of our research. We should not then be compelled to rest satisfied with the fact that a cloudy atmosphere abstracts electricity from the body, robs the skin and lungs of their electrical atmosphere, disturbs their mutual electrical relation with the external world, and by this disturbance prepares the body for rheumatic indisposition, with all that peculiar decomposition of the fluids, irritable tension of the nerves, fever, and painful affection of particular parts, with which it is accompanied. If this disturbance be represented according to certain new and inviting hypotheses, supported by some important facts, [2] as being perhaps an accumulation of electricity in
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[1] Let it be observed under similar circumstances. It ought not to be affirmed that they are free from rheumatic diseases, but only that they are less disposed to lie affected by them.
[2] That a rheumatic state makes. the body an isolator, A. von. Humboldt discovered as early as 1793, and he found that the observation was confirmed by subsequent experiments. "I have observed in myself that, when labouring under a severe attack of catarrhal fever, I was unable, by the most powerful metals, to excite the galvanic flash before my eyes; that I interrupted every connecting link between the muscular and nervous apparatus. As the rheumatic malady lessens the irritability of organs, so also it seems to diminish their conducting power. How is this? As yet nothing is known about it. I have every now and then met with isolating persons who were in perfect health, but can we not yet, amidst such an ocean of uncertainty, discover a condition by which we may determine every case? " Versuche in Vol. 1. p. 159. Pfaff believes that, during the existence of rheumatic diseases, the proper electricity of the body sinks down to nothing. See his Essay on the peculiar Electricity of the Human Body in Mechel's Archiv. VoL III. No. 2. p. 161.


the interior of the body, owing to a morbid, isolating activity of the skin, we may expect a more perfect knowledge of the nature of rheumatism through the medium of future diligent researches; and until these be made, some evident signs of connexion between rheumatic affections and the English Sweating Sickness will perhaps be sufficient to demonstrate the rheumatic nature of this latter disease.

In the first place, the very great susceptibility of those affected with the Sweating Fever to every change of temperature- the decidedly great danger of chill. In no known disease does this irritability of the skin show itself in so prominent a degree as in rheumatic fevers and in those non-febrile fluxes in which there even exists a very evident sensitiveness to metallic action.

Secondly, The tendency of the rheumatic diathesis to come to a crisis through the medium of a profuse, sour, and offensive perspiration without any assistance from art. [1] The English Sweating Sickness manifests this commotion of the organism in the most exquisite form hitherto known; for it admits of no kind of doubt that the sweat in this disease was of itself, and in itself, critical, in the fullest acceptation of the term.

Thirdly, The peculiar alteration in the fundamental composition of organic matter in rheumatic diseases, in consequence of which volatile acids of a strange odour are prevalent in the sweat, and urine, and animal excretions. The English Sweating Sickness exhibits also this result of morbid activity in a greater and more striking manner than any other disease. Nor can we regard the tendency to putridity, which has been observed, as anything but an increased degree of this condition.

Fourthly, The shooting pains in the limbs, the most decided sign of rheumatism, were not wanting in the English Sweating Sickness; nay, they became developed even to the extent of an incipient paralysis, and even the convulsions of those affected with this disease may not unjustly be attributed to the same source.

Fifthly, The tendency of rheumatism when it takes an unfavourable course to pass into regular dropsy, which is a consequence of the peculiar decomposition, manifested itself in the Sweating Fever in so marked a manner that the dropsy itself gradually destroyed the patient.
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[1] The author has at times made extraordinary experiments of this kind upon himself.


Should the sceptical still need another link in the comparison, we may adduce the miliary fever, a disease of decidedly rheumatic character. We must not, however, take as our standard the degenerate forms of miliary fever existing in modern times, but those grand and fully developed forms of the disease which occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in which we find a similar odour in the perspiration, the same oppression, and the same inexpressible anguish, with palpitation and restlessness. The arms became enfeebled as if seized with paralysis, violent pains of the limbs set in, and unpleasant pricking sensations in the fingers and toes, resembling in all these particulars the Sweating Sickness, only pursuing a more lengthened and irregular course, and becoming developed altogether in a different manner.
 

According to this representation, the English Sweating Sickness appears as a rheumatic fever in the most exquisite form that has ever yet been seen in the world, violently affecting the vitality of the brain and spinal marrow with their nerves, without, however, at all molesting the plexuses of the abdomen. The immoderate excretion of watery fluid, which in the mild cases alone took place, through a spontaneous curative power, while in the malignant forms it betokened paralysis of the vessels and an actual colliquation, directs our attention further to the consequent state of inanition, which very probably passed into a stagnation of the circulation, in the same manner as takes place after every other sudden loss of the fluids, whether from sanguineous effusion or evacuations by vomit and stool. Hence the uncommonly rapid course of the disease, and partly, too, the fatal stupor; [1] hence, likewise, the very pardonable misconception with respect to the nature of the Sweating Fever existing even in more modern times. The sequelae was more important and more fatal than the original rheumatic affection itself, which in its minor forms was mild and easily managed.

And thus is explained the wonderfully fortunate result of the old English treatment, which prevented this sequela, and avoided increasing the already too powerful efforts of nature to effect a cure. We have, therefore, nothing further to add to this judicious and truly scientific practice but our unqualified approbation; for it is the part of the physician, in diseases which have a spontaneous power of curing themselves, to leave this power free scope to act,
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[1] This phenomenon may justly be compared with the very similar but more enduring morbid sequelae of cholera. Paralysis and a repletion of the returning vessels must be regarded in the same light in both.
 

and merely by fostering care to remove all obstacles to its exercise. Should it be the destiny of mankind to be again visited by the disease of the sixteenth century (and it is by no means impossible that at some time or other similar events may recur), we would recommend our posterity to bear in mind this eternal truth, and to treasure up the golden words of the Wittenberg pamphlet, namely, to guard the healing art from strange and unnatural farragos, for it is only when it is subordinate to nature that it bears the stamp of reason-the mistress of all earthly things.

CHAPTER V.

FIFTH VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.

"Ubique lugubris erat lamentatio, fletus maerens, acerbus luctus."-KAYE.

SECT. 1.-IRRUPTION.

Full three and twenty years had now elapsed; no trace of the Sweating Sickness had shown itself anywhere in this long interval, and England had by its rapid advancement assumed quite another aspect, [1] when the old enemy of that people again, and for the last time, burst forth in Shrewsbury, the capital of Shropshire. [2] Here, during the spring, there arose impenetrable fogs from the banks of the Severn, which, from their unusually bad odour, led to a fear of their injurious consequences. [3] It was not long before the Sweating Sickness suddenly broke out on the 15th of April. To many it was entirely unknown or but obscurely recollected; for, amidst the commotions of Henry's reign, the old malady had long since been forgotten.

The visitation was so very general in Shrewsbury and the places in its neighbourhood, that every one must have believed that the atmosphere was poisoned, for no caution availed, no closing of the doors and windows, every individual dwelling became an hospital, and the aged and the young, who could contribute nothing towards the care of their relatives, alone remained unaffected by the pestilence. [4] The disease came as unexpectedly and as completely without all warning as it had ever
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[1] After Henry VIIIth's death in 1547, Edward VI., who was only nine years old, name to the throne. He died in 1553.
[2] Caius, p. 2.

[3] Ibid. p. 28.
[4] Godwyn, p. 142. Stow, p. 1023.


done on former occasions; at table, during sleep, on journeys, in the midst of amusement, and at all times of the day; and so little had it lost of its old malignity, that in a few hours it summoned some of its victims from the ranks of the living, and even destroyed others in less than one.[1] Four and twenty hours, neither more nor less, were decisive as to the event, the disease had thus undergone no change. 

In proportion as the pestilence increased in its baneful violence, the condition of the people became more and more miserable and forlorn; the townspeople fled to the country, the peasants to the towns; some sought lonely places of refuge, others shut themselves up in their houses. Ireland and Scotland received crowds of the fugitives. Others embarked for France or the Netherlands; but security was nowhere to be found; so that people at last resigned themselves to that fate which had so long and heavily oppressed the country. Women ran about negligently clad, as if they had lost their senses, and filled the streets with lamentations and loud prayers; all business was at a stand; no one thought of his daily occupations, and the funeral bells tolled day and night, as if all the living ought to be reminded of their near and inevitable end. [2] There died, within a few days, nine hundred and sixty of the inhabitants of Shrewsbury, the greater part of them robust men and heads of families; from which circumstance we may judge of the profound sorrow that was felt in this city.

SECT. 2.-EXTENSION AND DURATION.

The epidemic spread itself rapidly over all England, as far as the Scottish borders, and on all sides to the sea-coasts, under more extraordinary and memorable phenomena than had been observed in almost any other epidemic. In fact, it seemed that the banks of the Severn were the focus of the malady, and that from hence, a true impestation of the atmosphere was diffused in every direction. Whithersoever the winds wafted the stinking mist, the inhabitants became infected with the Sweating Sickness, and, more or less, the same scenes of horror and of affliction which had occurred in Shrewsbury were repeated. These poisonous clouds of mist were observed moving from place to place, with the disease in their train, affecting one town after another, and morning and evening spreading their nauseating insufferable stench. [3]
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[1] Caius, p. 3. 2

[2] Ibid. p. 7.
[3] "Which mists in the countrie wher it began, was sene file from toune to toune, with suche a stincke in morninges and evenings, that men could scarcely abide it."- Kaye. See Appendix, also Lat. edit. pp. 28, 29. It is to be remarked here, that in the year 1529, Damianus observed in Ghent, that more people sickened in the morning at sun-rise than at any other time. p. 115. b.


At greater distances, these clouds, being dispersed by the wind, became gradually attenuated, yet their dispersion set no bounds to the pestilence, and it was as if they had imparted to the lower strata of the atmosphere a kind of ferment which went on engendering itself, even without the presence of the thick misty vapour, and being received into men's lungs, produced the frightful disease everywhere. [1] Noxious exhalations from dung-pits, stagnant waters, swamps, impure canals, and the odour of foul rushes, which were in general use in the dwellings in England, together with all kinds of offensive rubbish, seemed not a little to contribute to it; and it was remarked universally, that wherever such offensive odours prevailed, the Sweating Sickness appeared more malignant. [2] It is a known fact, that in a certain state of the atmosphere, which is perhaps principally dependent on electrical conditions and the degree of heat, mephitic odours exhale more easily and powerfully. To the quality of the air at that time prevalent in England, this peculiarity may certainly be attributed, although it must be confessed, that upon this point there are no accurate data to be discovered.

The disease lasted upon the whole almost half a year, namely, from the 15th of April to the 30th of September, it thus passed but gradually from place to place, and we do not observe here, that it spread with that rapidity which, in the autumn of 1529, had excited such great wonder in Germany. It is much to be regretted, that contemporary writers either gave no intelligence respecting the irruption or course of the epidemic Sweating Sickness in individual towns, or, if they did so, that this has not been made use of by subsequent writers. Doubtless, a very considerable diversity of circumstances would here present themselves, and the very peculiar manner in which the corruption of the atmosphere spread on this occasion, might perhaps have been estimated from certain facts, and not from mere suppositions. Thus the only fact that has been handed down is very remarkable; namely, that the Sweating Sickness required a whole quarter of a year to traverse the short distance from Shrewsbury
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[1] Hosack admits in cases of this kind, a "fermentative or assimilating process" in the atmosphere. T. I. p. 312. Laws of Contagion. Lucretius had already expressed the same thought in poetry. L.VI. v. 1118 to 1123.
[2] Caius, p. 29.

[3] Ibid. pp. 2-8.


to London; for it did not break out there until the 9th of July, and in a few days, according to its former mode, reached its height, so that the rapid increase of deaths excited terror throughout the whole city. [1] Yet the mortality was considerably less than at Shrewsbury, for there died in the whole of the first week only eight hundred inhabitants, [2] and we may consider it decided, although all the contemporaries are silent on this very essential question, that the pestilence nowhere lasted longer than fifteen days, and perhaps in most places, as formerly, only five or six.

The deaths throughout the kingdom were very numerous, so that one historian actually calls it a depopulation. [3] No rank of life remained exempt, but the Sweating Sickness raged with equal violence in the foul huts of the poor and in the palaces of the nobility. [4] The piety which, in the general dejection, was displayed by the whole nation, giving birth to innumerable works of Christian benevolence and philanthropy, whereby undoubtedly many tears were dried up-many orphans and widows protected from distress and want, is hence explained: for this phenomenon, highly delightful as it is in itself, occurs only under great afflictions and a general fear of death, as we are taught by the universal history of epidemics. We are willing to believe, to the honour of the English, that the religious impulse which they derived from their ecclesiastical reformation, may have had no small share in its production; yet, unfortunately, such is the nature of human society, that no sooner is the calamity over, than virtue relaxes. Scarcely were the funeral obsequies performed, when everything returned to the usual routine; [5] in like manner, the Byzantines once, during a great earthquake, were seized with a fear of God, such as they had never before felt; day and night they flocked to the churches; nothing was to be seen but Christian virtue, selfdenial, and works of benevolence, but these only lasted until the earth again became firm. [6]

The very remarkable observation was made this year, that the Sweating Sickness uniformly spared foreigners in England, and, on the other hand, followed the English into foreign countries, so that those who were in the Netherlands and France, and even in
___________________________________________

[1] Holinshed, p. 1031, and others.

[2] Stow, p. 1023. Balter, p. 332.

[3] Godwyn, p. 142.
[4] Among others, the Duke of Suffolk and his brother. Godwyn, loc. rit.
[5] "And the same being whote and terrible, inforced the people greatly to call upon God and to do many deedes of charity: but as the disease ceased, so the devotion quickly decayed." Grafton, p. 525.
[6] History of Medicine, Vol. II. p. 136.


Spain, were carried off in no inconsiderable numbers by their indigenous pestilence, which was nowhere caught by the natives.

Not a single French inhabitant' [1]of the neighbouring town of Calais was affected, and neither the Scotch inhabitants of the same island, nor the Irish, were visited by the Sweating Sickness, so that we cannot get rid of the notion, that there was some peculiarity in the whole constitution of the English which rendered them exclusively susceptible of this disease. To make this out accurately would be so much the more difficult, because, in the original year of the Sweating Sickness, foreigners were the very persons among whom the English disease first broke out; and again, because English persons who had lived a year in France, on their return home in the summer of 1551, became the subjects of Sweating Sickness. [2] Contemporaries, indeed, find a cause in the gluttony and rude mode of life of the English. In short, in all those remote causes with which we have already become acquainted, and which, doubtless, also had their part in preparing the same scourge for the Germans and Flemings in 1529. Kaye, the most efficient eye-witness, even brings in proof of this view, that the temperate in England remained exempt from the Sweating Sickness, and on the contrary, that some Frenchmen at Calais, who were too much devoted to English manners, were seized with it. To this alone, however, this susceptibility cannot be attributed, unless we would be content with the antiquated system of giving too much weight to remote causes, opposed to which we are met by the striking fact, that the Germans and Netherlands, who had scarcely much improved in their manners since 1529, were not again visited by their old enemy.

SECT. 3.-CAUSES.-NATURAL PHENOMENA.

It is easy to perceive, or rather we have no alternative but to suppose, an unknown something in the English atmosphere, which imparted to the inhabitants the rheumatic diathesis, or, if we will,
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[1] Caius, p. 30, and at other places quoted. "And it so followed the Englishmen, that such marchants of England, as were in Flaunders and Spaine, and other countries beyond the sea, were visited therewithall, and none other nation infected therewith." Grafton, loc. cit. Compare, Baker, p. 332. Holinshed, p. 1031.
[2] Caius, p. 48.
[3] See Appendix, "these thré contryes (England, the Netherlands, and Germany) whiche destroy more meates and drynckes without al order, convenient time, reason, or necessitie then either Scotlande, or all other countries under the sunne, to the great annoiance of their owne bodies and wittes," &c. Compare p. 46 of the Lat. edit.


so penetrated their bodies, overcharged as they were with crude juices, [1] that their constitutions had the so-called opportunity, that is, were changed in such a manner as to fit them for the reception of the Sweating Sickness. Under such a condition, the common and more peculiar causes of this disease were not absolutely necessary, in order to induce its attack in a constitution thus long prepared for it, but the general causes of disease were sufficient of themselves to give it its last stimulus, although this should. be in an entirely different climate, as in the present instance was the case with the English who were living in Spain, and with the Venetian ambassador Naugerio, who, in the year 1528, fell ill of the petechial fever, when far from Italy, and living in France. [2]

It has, no doubt, struck the reader that each of the five eruptions in England lasted much longer than the single one which occurred in Germany and the north of Europe. This, too, might well depend upon peculiarities in the English soil. But let us now endeavour to render manifest, by means of phenomena actually observed, that unknown something in the atmosphere of 1551, the θειον of the great Hippocrates, which announces its presence by the sickening of the people; for beyond this it is not granted that human researches should penetrate. The winter of 1550-51 was dry and warm in England; the spring dry and cold; the summer and autumn hot and moist. [3] The weather of the whole year was uncommon in many particulars, without, however, influencing the lives of plants and animals so much or through so great a range as at the time of the fourth epidemic Sweating Sickness. It was even in some places praised as fruitful. [4] On the 10th of January a violent tempest occurred, which in Germany left no small traces [5] of its effects on houses and towers. The same day brought considerable floods in the river district of the Lahn, which must be noticed on account of the very unusual season of the year. [6] On the 13th of January, again at an unusual season, there followed a great storm with heavy rains, [7] which spread over the north of Germany; and on the 28th of January there occurred a considerable earthquake in Lisbon, whereby about two hundred houses were overthrown, and nearly a thousand people were destroyed;

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[1] Godwyn, loc. cit., expressly assures us, that gluttons who were taken with the disease when their stomachs were full, fell victims to it; and Kaye states that besides aged persons and children, the poor, who from necessity lived frugally, and endured hardships, either remained free, or bore the disease more easily. p. 51.
[2] See above, p. 215.

[3] Caius. See Appendix.
[4] Schwelin, p. 177.

[5]Spangenberg, fol. 463. a.
[6] Chron. Chron. p. 401.

[7] Ibid. and Spangenberg, loc. cit.


whilst a fiery meteor appeared, which, according to the unsatisfactory descriptions of the time, resembled most a northern light, and therefore was, in all probability, of electrical origin. [1] This was succeeded in Germany by a great frost in February. [2] On the 21st of March, at seven o'clock in the morning, two mock suns, with three rainbows, were seen at Magdeburg and in its vicinity, and in the evening two mock moons. [3] The same mock suns were also observed at Wittenberg, but without the rainbows. A similar phenomenon with two rainbows was again seen on the 27th of March; and mock suns had been observed. at Antwerp as early as the 28th of February. [5] About the same time (21st of March) the Oder overflowed its banks, [6] and floods followed after continued rains during the month of May in Thuringia and Franconia. [7] Great tempests were not wanting, [8] and, after considerable heat, there occurred, on the 26th of June, a thick summer fog in the districts of the Elbe, which deprived the besiegers of Magdeburg of the sight of that city. It may, therefore, be supposed that this phenomenon took place throughout a greater extent of country. [9] On the 22nd of September a meteor, like a northern light, was again seen, and on the 29th of that month, after some clear weather, a heavy fail of snow was followed by continued cold. [10]

These facts are sufficient plainly to prove that the course of the year 1551 was unusual, that the atmosphere was overcharged with water, and that the electrical conditions of it were considerably disturbed; nor must we omit to notice that, for the first time since 1547, mould spots gain appeared in Germany on clothes, and red discolorations of water, as likewise an exuberance of the lowest cryptogamic species of vegetation. [11]

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[1] Chron. Chron. loc. cit.

[2] Spangenberg, fol. 463. b.
[3] Angelus, p. 344. Spangenberg, fol. 464. a. Chron. Chron. p. 401.
[4] Spangenberg, fol. 464. a.

[5] Chron. Chron. p. 402.
[6] Haftitz, p. 167.  Angelus, p. 344.
[7] Chron. Chron. p. 403. Leuthinger, p. 248.

[8] Angelus, loc. cit.
[9] Spangenberg, fol. 465. a. Magdeburg was besieged at this time for having refused to accept the "Interim."
[10] Wurstisen, p. 624. Spangenberg, fol. 486. a.
[11] In the March of Brandenburg, crosses, as they were called, were seen upon clothes in the year 1547 (Leuthinger, p. 216); red water was seen at Zörbig, in the year 1549 (Ibid. p. 231), and frequently likewise in the year 1551. (Chron. Chron. p. 402.) Agricola seems to point to these connected phenomena in the passage already quoted; see p. 191, note 4.

SECT. 4.-DISEASES.

During the years of scarcity, from 1528 to 1534, it excited general surprise that malignant fevers, more especially the plague, petechial fever, and encephalitis, which in the individual accounts we can seldom sufficiently distinguish from each other, were constantly recurring, and, creeping slowly as they did from place to place, had no sooner finished their wandering visitations of whole districts of country, than they again made their appearance where they had broken out in former years. [1] It was a century of putrid malignant affections, in which typhous diseases were continually prevailing-a century replete with grand phenomena affecting human life in general, and continuing so, long after the period to which our researches refer.

There existed also an epidemic flux, which, during a cold summer [2] in 1538, spread over a great part of Europe, and especially over France, so that, according to the assurance of an eminent physician, there was scarcely any town exempt from it. [3] Of this flux we have unfortunately but very defective reports, among which we find a statement, not without importance, that there were no extraordinary forerunners, such as are observed in phenomena of this kind, to account for this epidemic. [4] Two years earlier, however, (12th of July 1536,) Erasmus died of the flux. [5] This disease seldom occurs sporadically, but usually as an epidemic, and thus, perhaps, slighter visitations of this rheumatic malady may be assumed to have preceded that greater one which took place in 1538.

A period remarkable for plague followed in the year 1540, and ended about 1543. The summer of the first-named. year is especially mentioned in the chronicles as having been, hot, and throughout the whole century it continued to be in great repute on account of the excellent wine it produced. [6] A spontaneous
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[1] "Pestis insuper in certis saeviebat Germani provinciis (1533), praesertim Nurenbergae et Babenbergae, et villis oppidisque per girum. Et est stupenda res, quod haec plaga nunquam totaliter cessat, sed omni anno regnat, jam hic, nunc alibi, de loco in locum, de provincia in provinciam migrando, et si recedit aliquamdiu, tamen post paucos annos et circuitum revertitur, et juventutem interim natam in ipso flore pro parte majore amputat."-Jo. Lange, Chron. Nuremburgens. eccles., in Mencken, T. II. col. 88.
[2] Spangenberg, fol. 369. b.

[3] Fernel, de abditis rerum causis, L. II. p. 107.

[4] See Fernel. Wurstisen (p. 613), however, states that the preceding winter had been very warm. Thus Aph. 12. sect. III. would hold good.
[5] Wurstisen, loc. cit.
[6] L'année des vins rostis, of the French. Stettler, p. 119.


conflagration of the woods was frequent, and an earthquake was felt in Germany on the 14th of December. [1] Thereupon, in 1541, there followed in Constantinople a great plague, [2] which, in the year 1542, spread by means of a Turkish invasion into Hungary, its superior importance being indicated by the presence of accompanying phenomena, among which the swarms of locusts that appeared this year are especially worthy of note. They came from the interior of Asia, and travelled in dense masses over Europe, passing northward over the Elbe, [3] and southward as far as Spain. [4] Kaye saw a cloud of locusts of this description in Padua; their passage lasted full two hours, and they extended further than the eye could reach. [5] The plague quickly spread in Hungary, and caused a similar destruction to the imperial army, which was fighting against the Turks under Joachim the Second, Elector of Brandenburg, as it had formerly caused the French before Naples. [6] Whether this pestilence may have been the original oriental glandular plague, or whether we may assume that it had already degenerated into the Hungarian Petechial Fever, such as likewise broke out in the year 1566, in the camp near Komorn, during the campaign of Maximilian the Second, and thence, by means of the disbanded lansquenets, spread in all directions, [7] cannot now well be determined for want of ascertained facts. In the following year, 1543, however, this plague broke out in Germany, namely, in the Harz districts in the provinces of the Saale, [8] and still more malignancy at Metz, [9] yet upon the whole it did not cause any considerable loss of life.

In the years 1545 and 1546 we again find the Trousse-galant in France. [10] It proved fatal to the Duke of Orleans, second son of Francis the First, in the neighbourhood of Boulogne, and, according to the testimony of French historians, to ten thousand English in that fort, so that the garrison was obliged to pitch a camp outside the town, and the reluctant reinforcements felt that they were encountering certain death. [11] The disease spread itself
___________________________________________

[1] Spangenberg, fol. 439. a. Chron. Chron. p. 375.
[2] Kircher, p. 147.

[3] Spangenberg, fol. 439. b.
[4] Villalba, T. L p. 93. They committed great ravages in Spain.
[5] See Appendix, and p. 25 of the Latin edition.-Compare Haflitz, p. 149, and
others.

[6] Spangenherg, fol. 439. b.
[7] Jordan, Tr. I. c. 19. p. 220.

[8] Spangenberg, fol. 440. b.
[9] Villalba, T. I. p. 94. The author has not been able to obtain the work of Sixtus Kepser, an observer of this diseae. (Consultatio saluberrima de causis et remediis epidemiae sive pestiferi morbi Bambergensium civitatem tum infestantis.) Bambergae 1544. 4to.

[10] See p. 219.

[11]  Mezeray, p. 1036.


also among the French troops, and we have seen that it extended its dominion beyond. the Alps of Savoy.[1]

It thus appears that, up to the period of which we have been speaking, the year 1544 alone was free from great visitations of disease, but it would be difficult from thenceforth satisfactorily to define the individual groups of epidemics, if the connexion of the epidemic Sweating Sickness of the year 1551 with them is to be made out; for there was, to use an expression of the schools, a continued typhous constitution, which extended throughout this whole period, manifesting itself on the slightest causes by malignant diseases; so that the visitations of sickness which we have hitherto been describing do but appear as exacerbations of them, with a predominance sometimes of one and sometimes of another set of symptoms.

The camp fever, which prevailed in the spring of 1547 among the imperial troops, there is good ground for considering to have been petechial. A great many soldiers fell sick of it, and it was so much the more malignant because the imperial army was composed of a variety of soldiery, Spaniards, Germans, Hungarians, and Bohemians. Those who were seized complained, as in encephalitis, of insufferable heat of the head, their eyes were swollen and started glistening from their sockets, their offensive breath poisoned the atmosphere around them, their tongues were covered with a brown crust, they vomited bile, their skin was of a leaden hue, and a deep purple eruption broke forth upon it. The disease, the fresh seeds of which the imperial hussars had brought with them out of Hungary, proved fatal as early as the second or third day, and it may be taken for granted, that both before and after the battle of Muhlberg (24th of April) it made no small ravages in Saxony; [2] yet it did not become general.

After a short interval the unusual phenomena of 1549 again increased; the chronicles of central Germany record blights and murrains in that year. They speak likewise of a northern light seen on the 21st of September, and of a malignant disease which, till the winter set in, carried off young people in no small numbers. [3] According to all appearance this disease was a petechial fever, which in the following year, 1550, likewise visited the March of Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony. [4] The mortality was particularly great at Eisleben, where, in less than four weeks from the 14th of September, 257 fell a sacrifice to it, and after this
___________________________________________

[1] See p. 219.

[2] Thuan. L. IV. p. 73.
[3] Spangenberg, fol. 458. a. b., 459. a.

[4] Leuthinqer, p. 241.


period it happened often that from twenty to twenty-four bodies were buried in one day; so that the loss in this little town may be reckoned at least at 500. [1] From this slight example the great malignity of the plagues of the sixteenth century will be perceived, and it would be still more evident if the physicians of those times had made more careful observations, and historians had more accurately recorded facts of this kind.

In 1551 there prevailed in Swabia a disease of the nature of plague, which determined the Duke Christoph, of Würtemburg, to withdraw himself from Stuttgard. It did not spread, and seems to have remained unknown to the rest of Germany. [2] In Spain, too, the plague [3] showed itself, and if to this be added the influenza of the same year, [4] as well as the numerous cases of malignant fevers in Germany and Switzerland, which were spoken of as still existing in the two following years, [5] it will again be seen quite evidently that the fifth epidemic Sweating Sickness appeared accompanied by a group of various epidemic diseases, which might be considered as resulting from general influences. The disease which is the subject of our research thus took its departure from Europe similarly accompanied as when it originally sprang up there, while in the interval it thrice repeated its deadly attacks.

SECT. 5.-JOHN KAYE.

Let us dedicate a few moments to the observer of the fifth sweating pestilence, whose life presents a lively image of the peculiarities and tendencies of his age. He was born at Norwich on the 6th of October, 1510, and received his education at Gonville Hall, Cambridge. He had early evinced by some productions his great knowledge of the Greek language, and his zeal for theological investigations. At a maturer age he went to Italy, at that time the seat of scientific learning, where Baptista Montanus and Vesalius, at Padua, initiated him in the healing art. He took his Doctor's degree at Bologna, and in 1542 he lectured on Aristotle in conjunction with Realdus Columbus, with great approbation. The following year he travelled throughout Italy, and with much diligence collated manuscripts for the emendation of Galen and Celsus, attended the prelections of Matthaeus

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[1] Spangenberg, fol. 460. a.
[2] Crusius, p. 280.

[3] Villalba, T. 1. p. 95.
[4] See above, p. 205.
[5] Wurstisen (1552, pestilential epidemic in Basle), p. 627.-Spangenberg, fol. 467. b., 468. a. (Pestilence and Phrenitis.)


Curtius at Pisa, and then returned through France and Germany to his own country.

After being admitted as a doctor of medicine at Cambridge, he practised with great distinction at Shrewsbury and Norwich, but was soon summoned by Henry the Eighth to deliver anatomical lectures to the surgeons in London. He was much honoured at the court of Edward the Sixth, and the appointment of body physician, which this monarch bestowed on him, he retained also under Queen Mary and Elizabeth. In 1547, he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians, over which, at a later period, he presided for seven years. He constantly supported the honour of this body with great zeal, compiled its Annals from the period of its foundation by Linacre to the end of his own presidentship, and originated an establishment, the first of the kind in England, [1] for annually performing two public dissections of human bodies.

That he was thus established in London before the year 1551 is certain, yet he was present in Shrewsbury during the Sweating Sickness. His pamphlet [2] upon this disease, the first and last published in England, did not, however, appear before 1552, after all was over. It is written in strong language and a popular style, and with a laudable frankness; for Kaye blames in it, without any reserve, the gross mode of living of his country-men, and does not fatigue his reader with too much book learning, which neither he nor his contemporaries could refrain from displaying on other occasions. He reserved this for the Latin version of his pamphlet, which was published four years later, [3] and although, judged according to a modern standard, it is far from being satisfactory, yet it contains an abundance of valuable matter, and proves its author to be a good observer; and in this we eau nowhere mistake that he is an Englishman of the sixteenth century, however numerous the terms he may borrow from Celsus. His doctrines are of the old Greek school throughout, of which the physicians of those times were staunch supporters; hence the term ephemera [4] pestilens, his comparison of the disease with the similar fevers of the ancients, [5] and his

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[1] Aikin, p. 103, et seq.

[2] See Appendis.
[3] 1556.-This edition is rery rare, and is probably not to be found in Germany. The edition brought out by the author (1833) is taken from a very good London reprint of 1721.
[4] In the German, sometimes called "eines Tags pestilentziches Fieber."
[5] P. 15. Lat. edit.-II. Ελωδης, τυφωδης, υδρωδης. .


accurate appreciation of the important doctrine of aethereal spirits, to which he refers its chief causes, and, according to which, the corrupted atmosphere (spiritus corrupti) becomes mixed in the lungs with the spirits of blood (spiritus sanguinis), whence it at once appears explicable to him, why many persons may be attacked with the Sweating Sickness at the same time, and even in different places, and why the parts of the body in which, according to the ancient Greek notion, the aethereal spirits developed themselves, were most violently affected with this disease. [1] From the relationship of the infected air to the athereal spirits in the body, polluted by intemperance, it also appears explicable to him, why foreigners in England, in whom this pollution took place in a less degree, were, only in cases of individual exception, attacked by the Sweating Sickness, [2] not to mention other theoretical notions.

On malaria in general, as he was an observant naturalist, he was enabled to turn to good account his experience in Italy and his knowledge of the ancients, and his estimation of the subordinate causes, with regard to which he takes up the same position as Agricola, who was also a good naturalist, is likewise on the whole worthy of approbation. [3] The immoderate use of beer, amongst the English, was considered by many as the principal reason why the Sweating Sickness was confined to this nation. On this subject he enlarges even to prolixity, with evident English predilection for this beverage which manifestly contributed to the morbid repletion of the people; and he himself acknowledged this as a principal cause of the Sweating Sickness. The injurious quality of salt-fish, as alleged by Erasmus and the German physician Hellwetter, [4] he would not altogether have ventured to reject, [5] for it caused constant and abundant fetid perspirations, and might thus have contributed to pave the way for the Sweating Sickness. A similar source was to be found in the dirty rush floors in the English houses, [6] and other subordinate causes of the diseases of which mention has been made in the course of this treatise.

As a zealous advocate of temperance, it were to be wished that he had met with more attention; but the words of a good physician are given to the winds, when they are directed against vices and habits of sensual indulgence; people require from him an infallible preservative, and not a lecture on morality. His precepts on food and beverage are circumstantial, after the manner
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[1] P. 17. seq. Lat. edit.

[2] Ibid. p. 49.

[3] Ibid. p. 31.

[4] See above, p. 253.
[5] P. 43. Lat. edit.

[6] Ibid. p. 44. See above, p. 198.


of the ancients, and he recommends such a variety, that it is difficult to make a choice; while nothing but the greatest simplicity can be of any avail. Purifying fires, which were kindled everywhere in times of plague, are also much lauded by him, and we here learn incidentally, that the smiths and cooks remained free [1] from the Sweating Sickness. Fumigations with odoriferous substances of all kinds, even the most costly Indian spices, were everywhere employed in the houses of the rich, and no one stirred out without having with him some one of the thousand scents recommended from time immemorial during the plague. The medicines which he recommends are those that were then in vogue; among which Theriaca, Armenian Bole, and Pearls, occur in various combinations, yet most of the prophylactics which he advises for obviating any defect in the constitution are not very violent.

Kaye's treatment of the Sweating Sickness is according to the mild old English plan, which is very judiciously and perspicuously laid down. He kept himself, on the whole, free from the influence of the schools in this instance, and the only remedy which he approved in case of necessity, was a harmless and very favourite preparation of pearls and odoriferous substances, which were called Manus Christi, [2] or, in Germany, sugar of pearls. It had its origin in the fifteenth century, and was the invention of Guainerus, [3] and there were various receipts for compounding it. [4] He also sometimes prescribed, at the commencement of the attack, [5] bole or terra sigilata, for how could a physician of the sixteenth century doubt the antipoisonous effect of this overrated remedy? Restlessness in the patient, debility, a too thick skin, and thick blood, are set forth by him as the chief impediments to the critical sweat, and in order to remove them, he sets to work with great and laudable caution, ordering, according to circumstances, even mulled wine and greater warmth. Sometimes, too, he could not refrain from employing Theriac and Mithridate, but he did not use these remedies to any great extent. For dropsical and rheumatic patients who became the subjects of the Sweating Sickness, he prescribed a beverage of Guaiacum; he also recommended as a sudorific, the China root, which was at that time much in use. When the perspiration broke out, he positively prohibited the urging it beyond the proper point; all medicines were
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[1] P. 74. Lat. edit.

[2] Ibid. p. 94.

[3] Practica, fol. 43. a. 263. a.
[4] Fallop. de compos. medic. cap. 41. p. 208.

[5] P. 102. Lat. edit.


thence laid aside, and he trusted to aromatic vinegar and gentle succession alone for keeping off the lethargy, without considering, with Damianus, that more severe measures were essential. [1]

As a learned patron of the sciences, Kaye ranks amongst the most distinguished men of his country. Through his interest, Gonvile Hall was, in the reign of Queen Mary, elevated to the rank of a college, better established, and more richly endowed. To the end of his life he continued to preside [2] over this his favourite institution, and passed his old age [3] there, not in Monkish contemplation, like Linacre, but zealously devoted to study, as the great number of his writings testifies. He was accused of having changed his faith according to circumstances. This pliability served, it is true, to retain him in favour with sovereigns of very opposite modes of thinking: it is not, however, a sign of elevation of mind, and can only be explained in part by the spirit of the English Reformation. Kaye was a reformer in fact, inasmuch as he was a promoter of instruction, and, perhaps, laid no stress on outward profession. His versatility as a scholar is extraordinary, and would be worthy of the highest admiration, had he entirely avoided the reproach of credulity, had he not been too prolix in subordinate matters, and had he shown more decided signs of genius. At one time he translated and illustrated the writings of Galen; at another, he wrote on philology or the medical art-it must be confessed, without much originality, for he took Galen and Montanus as his patterns. [4] But where could physicians be found at that time who did not follow established doctrines? Some essays on history and English Archaeology are found among his writings ; and his works on Natural History, dedicated to Conrad Gesner, are among the best of his age, because he imparted his observations in them quite plainly and naturally, free from the trammels of any school. He died at Cambridge on the 29th of July, 1573, and ordered for himself the following epitaph-"Fui Caius."
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[1] P. 106, 7. Lat. edit.
[2] Shortly before his death he resigned the Mastership, but continued to reside in the College as a fellow-commoner. See Aikin, p. 109.-Transl. note.
[3] He gave for a new building to this establishment, more than 1800 L, a very considerable sum for those times.
[4] De medendi methodo, ex Cl. Galeni Pergameni, et Joh. Bapt. Montani, Veronensis, principum medicorum, sententia, Libri duo. Basil 1544. 8. He dedicated this frivolous book to the court-physician in ordinary, Butts. See Balaeus, fol. 232. b.
[5] Compare his own work, "De Libris Propriis," in Jebb, which is a similar imitation of Galen, and is written in nearly the same spirit.
[6] De canibus Britannicis et de rariorum animalium et stirpium historia, in Jebb.

CHAPTER VI.

SWEATING SICKNESSES.

"Εστι γαρ παθος λυσις των δεσμων της εις ζωην δυναμιος

ARETAEUS

SECT. 1.-THE CARDIAC DISEASE OF THE ANCIENTS.

(MORBUS CARDIACUS.)

Thus by the autumn of 1551, the Sweating Sickness had vanished from the earth; it has never since appeared as it did then and at earlier periods; and it is not to be supposed that it will ever again break forth as a great epidemic in the same form, and limited to a four-and-twenty hours' course; for it is manifest, that the mode of living of the people had a great share in its origin; and this will never again be the same as in those days. Yet nature is not wanting in similar phenomena, which have appeared in ancient and modern times; and if we take into the account the great frequency of cognate rheumatic maladies, it is possible that isolated cases may have sometimes occurred, in which repletion of impure fluids, and violently inflammatory treatment, have augmented a rheumatic fever, even to the destruction of nervous vitality, by means of profuse perspiration-only, perhaps, that they ran a longer course (which does not constitute an essential difference), and under totally different names, whereby attention is misled. Of all the diseases that have ever appeared which can in any way be compared to the English Sweating Sickness, we have principally three to look back upon-the cardiac disease of the ancients, the Picardy sweat, and the sweating fever of Rötingen. The first was, for reasons which have been already mentioned, [1] almost unknown to the learned of the sixteenth century; and it is matter of surprise, that Kaye himself, who had chosen for his favourite the best Roman physician, we mean Celsus, could have so entirely overlooked his by no means unimportant statements respecting this disease. Houlier is the only author who ventures a comparison of the English Sweating Sickness with the ancient cardiac disease; his few, and almost lost words, [2] remained, however,
___________________________________________

[1] See p. 251.
[2] "Sudor anglicus fere similis ei sudori, quem cardiacum dicebamus." De morb. int. L. II. fol. 60, a.


unheeded; nor are the differences between the two diseases small: but to return.

The disease of which we are speaking appeared for a period of 500 years (from 300 B.C. to 200 after Christ), and was a common, almost every-day occurrence, which is often mentioned even by non-medical writers. It was exceedingly dangerous, and even esteemed fatal; and as it was far above the reach of Greek physiology, there were not wanting extraordinary opinions respecting its nature, and bold and singular modes of treatment, to which those who were attacked were subjected. The name Cardiac disease (morbus cardiacus, νοσος καρδιακα, and probably also νοσος καρδιτις), was not bestowed by medical men, but by the people; who, in the fourth century before Christ, for the name is as ancient as that period, could not know that the learned would dispute on that subject. Some affirmed, and among them men of great authority, such as Erasistratus, Asclepiades, and Aretaeus, that the people were in the right so to call the disease; that the heart was actually the part affected, and that their knowledge of the heart's functions was by no means small. [1] Others, on the contrary, would only acknowledge in that name an expression indicative, not of the particular seat of the disease, but only of its importance, inasmuch as the heart is well adapted, as the centre and source of life, to indicate this. [2] Others again, who attempted more refined conjectures, wished to represent the pericardium as the seat of the malady, because darting pains were sometimes felt [3] in the region of the heart, or the diaphragm, or the lungs, or even the liver. The opinions were numerous; the actual knowledge was small. [4]

The cardiac disease began with rigors and a numbness in the limbs, [5] and sometimes even throughout the whole body. The pulse then took on the worst condition, was small, weak, frequent, empty, and as if dissolving; in a more advanced stage, unequal and fluttering, until it became completely extinct. Patients were affected with hallucinations; [6] they were sleepless, despaired of their recovery, and were usually covered suddenly
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[1] "Est autem cor praestans atque salutaris corpori particula, praeministrans omnibus sanguinem membris, atque spiritum." Cael. Aurel. Acut. L. II. c. 34. p. 154. Compare the Autor's "Doctrine of the Circulation, before Harvey," Berlin, 1831. 8.
[2] Cael. Aurel. cap. 30. p. 146.

[3] Ibid. cap. 34. p. 156.
[4] The whole 34th chapter, loc. cit. Aurelian gives, from the 30th to the 40th cap., the fullest information respecting the Morbus cardiacus.
[5] Torpor frigidus, C. 35. p. 157.

[8] Hallucinatio.


with an ill-savoured perspiration over the whole body, whence the disorder was likewise called Diaphoresis. Sometimes, however, a washy sweat broke out, first on the face and neck. This then spread itself over the whole body; assumed a very disagreeable odour, became clammy and like water in which flesh had been macerated, and ran through the bed-clothes in streams, so that the patient seemed to be melting away. [1] The breath was short and panting, almost to annihilation (insustentabilis). Those affected were in continual fear of suffocation; [2] tossed to and fro in the greatest anguish, and with a very thin and trembling voice uttered forth only broken words. They constantly felt an insufferable oppression in the left side, or even over the whole chest; [3] and in the paroxysms which were ushered in with a fainting fit, or were followed by one, the heart was tumultuous and palpitated, without any alteration in the smallness of the pulse. [4] The countenance was pale as death, the eyes sunk in their sockets, and when the disease took a fatal turn, all was darkness around them. The hands and feet turned blue; and whilst the heart, notwithstanding the universal coldness of the body, still beat violently, they for the most part retained possession of their senses. A few only wandered a short time before death, while others were even seized with convulsions and endowed with the power of prophecy. Finally, the nails became curved on their cold hands, the skin was wrinkled, and thus the sufferers resigned their spirit without any mitigation of their miserable condition. [6]

A striking resemblance is plainly perceived, from this description, between the ancient cardiac disease and the English Sweating Sickness in the most exquisite cases of each. In both the same palpitation of the heart, the same alteration of the voice, the same anxiety, the same impediment to respiration, and thence the same affection of the nerves of the chest, the same ill-scented sweat, and by means of this sweat, the same fatal evacuation; in short, all the essential symptoms arising from the same circle  of functions. For in the sweating pestilences of the ancients [7] as well as the moderns, the nerves of the abdomen remained unaffected; the liver, intestines, and kidneys, took no part in the primary affection; the diaphragm, as in the English Sweating Sickness, formed the partition. Hence the acute Aretaeus did not hesitate to call the cardiac disease fainting (syncope),
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[1] Cael. Aurel. p. 157.

[2] Spiratio praefocabilis.
[3] C. 34. p. 154. Thoracis gravedo.

[4] C. 35. p. 156.
[5] Aretaeus, L. II. c. 3. p. 30.

[6] Cael. Aurel. loc. cit.

[7] Diaphoretici, cardiaci,


with certainly an unusual extension of the notion implied by this term, which in its common acceptation excludes the turbulent commotion of the heart. In the affection of the brain some difference occurs, for though the hallucination afforded an unfavourable prognostic in both diseases, yet the fatal stupor was peculiar to the English Sweating Sickness, no observer having made mention of it in the cardiac disease.

Greater and altogether essential differences between this affection and the English Sweating Sickness appear in another respect. There is every reason to suppose that the cardiac disease first appeared in the time of Alexander the Great, that is to say, at the end of the fourth century before Christ; for the Hippocratic physicians were unacquainted with it, Erasistratus, who was body physician to Seleucus Nicator, and was a universally celebrated professor at Alexandria under the first Ptolemy, being the first to mention it. If that age be compared even superficially with that of Henry the VIIth and Henry the VIIIth; and Africa, Asia Minor, and the South of Europe with England, we shall easily be convinced that the two diseases, notwithstanding the agreement in their main symptoms, could not be the same; moreover, much was comprehended by the ancients under the name of morbus cardiacus, which, on a nearer examination, proves not to be one and the same definite form of morbid action:
for sometimes this affection is spoken of as an independent disease; sometimes it is mentioned only as a symptom superadded to others-as a kind of transition from other very various diseases, such as has occurred in modern times. Soranus mentions, as such diseases, continued fevers, accompanied by much heat; and reckons among them the "Causus," that is, an inflammatory bilious fever, to which Aretaeus also saw the cardiac disease superadded. These fevers passed, on the fifth or sixth day, into the cardiac disease, and such a transition occurred chiefly on the critical days. [2] In a similar sense Celsus speaks even of Phrenitis, under which name we are here to understand all inflammatory fevers accompanied by violent delirium, with the exception of actual inflammation of the brain. Thus we see that the cardiac disease arose and increased on a very different soil from other diseases, and was, to furnish an ancient example, as far from being independent under these circumstances as lethargy was in similar cases.
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[1] Febres continue flammat. Cael. Aurel. c. 31. p. 147.
[2] Crekeus, Cur. ac. L. II. c. 3. p. 188.


But there was doubtless an independent idiopathic form of the cardiac disease. Whether this was febrile or not, the most celebrated physicians of ancient times were not agreed. Now, how could they ever have differed upon the subject, if the cardiac disease had always appeared only as a sequela on the fifth or sixth day of inflammatory fevers? Apollophanes, a disciple of Erasistratus, and physician to Antiochus the First, considered it, with his master, as constantly febrile, and his opinion prevailed for a long time: perhaps he was in the right, for it is probable that in the first half of the third century, the disorder was much more violent than at a subsequent period. His celebrated contemporary, Demetrius of Apamea, disciple of Herophilus, affirmed, that he had recognised fever only in the beginning of the disease, and that it disappeared in its further progress. Very soon, most physicians decided that it was not febrile, but Asclepiades distinguished a febrile and a non-febrile form of the cardiac disease, and it is certain that this physician was a very accurate observer. Themison and Thessalus also agreed with him. Aretaeus described, in a cursory manner, the febrile form only, and perhaps was not acquainted with any other. Soranus followed, in the essential points, Asclepiades, the founder of his school; and later writers generally regarded the inward heat, the hot breath, and the burning thirst-symptoms which were occasionally less marked, as proofs of the febrile nature of the disease. Numerous theoretical views, belonging to particular schools, of which we do not here treat, were intermingled with these, and upon the whole, that form seems to have been esteemed as non-febrile, in which the signs of feverish excitement appeared less marked. In all cases the cardiac disease set in with external coldness, and with a small, contracted, quick pulse, symptoms which with certainty indicate fever.[1]

Respecting the course of the cardiac disease, we are not furnished with sufficient information. It was no doubt very rapid, for the frame could not long endure symptoms of so violent a kind, and the disorder must of necessity soon have come to a crisis; yet from the ample directions for treatment, we may conclude that it lasted at least some days. If the perspiration was well surmounted, patients seemed to recover rapidly, and their sufferings appeared to them, according to the expressions of Aretaeus, like a dream, out of which they awoke to a consciousness
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[1] Cael. Aurel. c. 33. p. 150.


of the increased acumen of their senses. [1] But the termination was not always so fortunate. The disease was very dangerous, and in many, after the occurrence of an incomplete crisis, an insidious fever remained behind, which ended in a consumption. [2] The whole phenomenon was altogether peculiar, and among existing diseases there are none which bear any comparison with it.

There must therefore have been something in the whole state of existence among the ancients which favoured the formation of the cardiac disease. That it arose oftener in summer than in winter, that it attacked men more frequently than women, and especially young people full of life, and hot-blooded plethoric persons, who used much bodily exercise, we learn from credible observers. [3] In this respect, therefore, it bore a resemblance to the English Sweating Sickness. We may also add, that indigestion, repletion, drunkenness, as likewise grief and fear, but especially vomiting and the employment of the bath after dinner, occasioned an attack of the malady. [4] Let us call to mind the habits of the ancients. It was in the time of Alexander that oriental luxury was first introduced. Gluttony became a part of the enjoyment of life, and warm baths a necessary refinement in sensuality, which just at this time were philosophically established by Epicurus; for was this the last instance in which philosophers encouraged the errors and infirmities of human society.

Here again, therefore, as in the English Sweating Sickness, we meet with the relaxed state of skin, and the foul repletion engendered by the same indulgence in sensuality which we have found to exist in the sixteenth century. How this corruption of morals increased, and to what a frightful height it was carried among the Romans, it is not necessary here further to elucidate; and we may take it for a fact, that in consequence of it, the general constitution of the ancients underwent a peculiar modification; that this relaxation of skin and gross repletion were propagated from generation to generation; and that, as among chronic diseases, those of a gouty character were its more frequent results, so among the inflammatory, the cardiac disease made its appearance as the general effect of this kind of life.

Where, however, such a system of life existed among whole communities, the original and peculiar occasion was not needed in every individual case to bring the pre-disposition for a disease
___________________________________________

[1] L. II. c. 3. p. 30.

[2] Aret. Cur. ac. L. II. c. 3. p. 193.
[3] Cael. Aurel. c. 31. P. 146.

[4] Ibid.


wich propagated itself by hereditary taint, to an actual eruption. Shocks to the constitution of quite a different kind were often sufficient for the purpose. Thus, among the Romans, it was by no means always the case, that gluttony and relaxation of the skin immediately gave rise to the cardiac disease; while, on the other hand, the usual faintness, induced by too copious bloodletting, passed into this impetuous agitation of the heart, accompanied by colliquative sweats; [1] and all over-violent perspirations in other diseases were apt to take the same dangerous course. [2] We must here also take into account a practice among the Romans, which was very injurious, and yet rendered sacred by the laws; namely, visiting the public baths late in the evening, just after the principal meal, and awaiting the digestion of their food in these places of soft indulgence. [3] How much must the tendency of sweating disorders have been favoured by these means!

Surmises, founded on the facts already stated, can alone be offered respecting the nature of the ancient cardiac disease. The ancients give us no certain intelligence upon it; for their mode of observing did not lead to that object at which modern medicine aims. That the cardiac disease was not of a rheumatic character seems deducible from several circumstances-from the quality of the atmosphere in southern climates, which is not so favourable to rheumatic maladies, as to give rise to a distinctly defined form of that complaint throughout a period of five hundred years; from the nature of the so-called inflammatory fever, which exhibited no rheumatic symptoms in its course; and lastly, from the treatment of the cardiac disease, for it was a common practice to cool down the "diaphoretic" patients in the midst of their perspiration, by sponging them with cold water, to expose them to the air, and some physicians went so far as to advise cold baths and effusions. [4] How could they have ventured upon such remedies if the cardiac disease had been of a rheumatic nature?

In the sweating fevers of the sixteenth century, every abrupt refrigeration, every exposure of the skin, was fatal. It is thence
___________________________________________

[1] Cael. Aurel. c. 33. p. 153. A perfectly similar observation is made in the present day, on the increasing frequency of liver complaints in England. Parents who have been a long time in the East Indies, entail the predisposition to these diseases, which are altogether foreign to the temperate zones, on their posterity, among whom there is no need of a tropical heat, both merely common causes acting in their own country, to call forth various liver complaints. See Bell (George Hamilton).
[2] Cael. Aurel. c. 36. p. 159.
[3] On this subject read the classical work of Baccius.
[4] Celsus, L. III. c. 19. p. 140. Cael. Aurel. from c. 37. on.


to be inferred, that the English Sweating Sickness differed from the ancient cardiac disease in its rheumatic character; even although both diseases were founded in common on an impure gross repletion and relaxation of skin, and the essential phenomena of both went through the same course: not to advert to other differences which are manifest from what has been stated.

The remaining treatment of the cardiac disorder should not be altogether passed over in this place, because it shows very clearly the general style of thinking of the medical profession, as also certain metaphysical excitations which are innate in that profession, and of which there is therefore a repetition in all ages. For whilst some proceeded with commendable care and caution, and Aretaeus feared [1] a fatal result from the slightest error, others, again, would fain render excited nature obedient to their rough command by means of the most violent remedies. It, therefore, occasionally happened that in their over-hasty activity they were unable to distinguish between a salutary perspiration and a dangerous "diaphoresis." This they suppressed at all hazards, and thus sent their patients to the shades of their fathers. Others forthwith flew to Chrysippic bandaging, the great means of suppressing profuse evacuations, and even violent spasms. [2] Others were for obviating the debility as quickly as possible by means of nourishing diet, and overloaded the stomach, as if the recovery of strength depended entirely upon eating. Others allowed as much wine as possible to be drunk for twenty-four hours together, even to the extent of producing intoxication; [3] and Asclepiades selected for this extraordinary death-bed carousal the Greek salt wine, [4] for the sake of bringing on a diarrhoea, whereby the opened pores of the skin might again close, and the too mobile atoms might be carried towards the bowels. With the same object he ordered active clysters, [5] for if they succeeded in causing a full evacuation, he maintained that the perspiration must necessarily be arrested! Endemus, of the Methodic sect, recommended even clysters of cold water, [6] and whatever else the rashness of medical men had fool-hardily contrived; acting on the ancient notion, that severe diseases always required violent remedies. Aretaeus recommended blood-letting, which others pronounced to be
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[1] "Ην γαρ επι συγκοπη και σμικρον αμαρφη, ρηιδιως εις αδου τρεπει Cur. ac. L. II. c. 3. p. 188.
[2] Cael. Aurel. c. 37. p. 169.

[3] Cael. Aurel. c. 38. p. 171.
[4] Graecum salsum, οινος τεθαλασσωμενος,, a mixture of wine and sea-water which was very much in use.
[5] Cael. Aurel. c. 39. pp. 174, 175.

[6] Cael. Aurel. c. 38. p 171.

nothing short of certain death. [1] He had, however, a notion, that the Causus was the foundation of the cardiac disease, and perhaps he was right.

A cautious employment of wine was apparently of great use, [2] and what may excite surprise, physicians gave detailed and frivolous precepts on the choice and enjoyment of food. If the irritable stomach rejected this repeatedly, they even went so far, according to the Roman method, as to make the patient vomit both before and after his meals, in order that the organ might thus bear the repeated use of nourishment. It was also asserted that the stomach retained food and wine better if the body were previously rubbed all over with bruised onions. [3] All this affords us an insight into the nature of this remarkable disease, which has now so completely vanished from the world. Finally, when astringent decoctions proved fruitles, particular confidence was placed in the application of various powders [4] to the surface of the body, conjointly with the use of light bed-clothes and the avoidance of feather-beds, which the effeminacy of the ancients had already introduced. [5] As astringents they selected pomegranate bark, the leaves of roses, blackberries, and myrtles, as also fullers' earth, gypsum, alum, litharge, slaked lime, [6] and, when nothing else was at hand, even common road dust! The efficacy of some of these extraordinary remedies cannot be denied. At least it bas been proved in modern times with respect to alkalies, which are of a somewhat similar nature, that they are of great service where there is an abundant determination of acid towards the skin, and it is very probable that the perspiration of these diaphoretic patients contained much acid.

SECT. 2.-THE PICARDY SWEAT.

(SUETTE DES PICARDS-SUETTE MILIAIRE.)

The Picardy Sweat is a decided miliary fever, which has often prevailed, not only in Picardy, but also in other provinces of France, for more than a hundred years, and even at the present
___________________________________________

[1] "nihil jugulatione differre." Cael. Aurel. c. 38. p. 171.
[2] Celsus recommended a sextarium and a half a-day, which is about 42 cubic inches. loc. cit. Cardiacorum morbo unicam spem in vino esse, certum est. Plin. list. Nat. L. xxiii. c. 2. T. II. p. 303. Bibere et sudare vita cardiaci est. Senec. Epist. 15. T. II. p. 68. Ed. Ruhkopf. Cardiaco cyathum nunquam mixturus amico. Juvenal. Sat. v. 32.
[3] Celsus.

[4] Aspergines, sympasmata, diapasmata. Cael. Aurel. c. 38. p. 171.

[5] Cael. Aurel. c. 37. p. 161.

[6] Areteus, p. 192.

[7] Celsus, loc. cit.


time exists in some places as an endemic disease. [1] We have pointed out the affinity between the English Sweating Sickness and miliary fever. Both are rheumatic fevers-the former of twenty-four hours' duration, the latter running a course of at least seven days. In the former there was no eruption, or if in isolated cases an eruption made its appearance, it was doubtless subordinate, not essential. In the miliary fever, on the contrary, the eruption is so essential, that this disease may be considered as a completely exanthematous form of rheumatic fever.

The history of miliary fever is full of important facts, and, the sweating fever of Picardy forms but a variety of it. The eruption in itself is of very ancient occurrence, and was most probably, as at present, observed time immemorial in conjunction with petechi, occurring as a critical metastasis in the oriental glandular plague, perhaps even in the ancient plague recorded by Thucydides. It also occasionally accompanied petechial fever, as unquestionably it did small-pox and many other diseases, in the same manner as we now see; for the miliary eruption is a very common symptom, which is easily induced, and increases the danger of various other accidental complications. This is different, however, from the idiopathic miliary fever, which did not exist either before, or even at the period of, the English Sweating Sickness, but occurred as an epidemic, frequently mentioned in Saxony, a hundred years later [2] (1652).

We cannot, therefore, consider this eruptive disease as having proceeded from the English Sweating Sickness, in the same manner as the petechial fever had its probable origin in the glandular plague, even supposing a more decided inclination of the Sweating Sickness to the eruptive character could be proved than is possible from the facts afforded. A whole century intervened, and what vast national revolutions!

This same separation of so long a period makes also against the supposition, that the English Sweating Sickness was an interrupted miliary fever, which exhausted its power by a too luxuriant activity of the skin on the first day, before the eruption made its appearance. Moreover, the similarity and isolation of all the five epidemic sweating fevers, as regards the brevity of
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[1] For instance, in the villages of Rue-Saint-Pierre and Neuville-en-Hez, between Beauvais and Clermont. Bayer, Suette, p. 74.
[2] Godofredi Welschii Historia medica novum puerperarum morbum continens. Disp. d. 20. April. 1655.

Lipsiae, 4to. The principal work upon the first visitation of miliary fever in Germany.


the course of the disease, and the absence of all transition forma of any duration, which certainly would have existed had nature intended gradually to form a miliary fever out of the English Sweating Sickness, lead to the same conclusion.

But to return to the miliary fever. Some forms of this disease have been observed, in which a profuse perspiration, in combination with nervous symptoms, has endangered life on the first day of the attack; equally often, too, the eruption bas appeared fully formed on the very first day; and if we duly consider, as we ought, the regular course of miliary fever whenever it has assumed an epidemic character, we shall always find, even in that case, a development of symptoms differing fundamentally from those of the English Sweating Sickness. If, occasionally, instances of miliary fever occurred, in which no eruption came out, as was the case recently (in 1821), they were to be considered in the same light as other acute eruptive diseases, as, for example, scarlet fever, in which nature indulges in a like irregularity, without, however, altering the essence of those diseases. And since, finally, it has been observed in many cases, [1] that the miliary eruption could be prevented by the application of cold at the commencement, a distinguished modern physician has attached great consequence to this circumstance, as showing that miliary fever and the English Sweating Sickness were the same disease [2] but a check of this kind is, at all events, impossible in those miliary fevers where the eruption breaks forth on the first or second day; and moreover, experience tells us, that many other diseases also, such as inflammations, rheumatisms, gastric fevers, and even abdominal typhus, may be arrested in their course, and confined within narrower bounds, so as not to manifest all their symptoms.
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[1] For example, in the epidemic of 1782, which, during the course of a few months, carried off in Languedoc upwards of 30,000 people. Pujol observed in that epidemic four forms of exanthem. 1. A Purpura urticata-elevated rose-like spots, or papula of smaller circumference: it was very favourable, and sometimes passed off without fever. 2. Spots consisting of very small miliary vesicles and pustules which ran into each other: lese favourable. 3. Small hemispherical pimples, from the size of a mustard seed to that of a corn of maize. They were surmounted by a white point before they died away, and the large kind became converted into pustules, filled with matter or greyish semitransparent phlyctaenae, with red inflamed bases. This form was the commonest, and extended, mixed with the others, over the whole surface, especially the trunk. 4. An exanthem resembling flea-bites, of a bright red, with a small grey miliary vesicle in the middle, almost invisible, except through a lens: this form was the worst. Pujol, (OEuvres diverses de Médecine Pratique, 4 vols. Castres, 1801. 8vo.
[2] Foderé, 111. p. 222.


We are, therefore, completely entitled to consider the appearance of the miliary sweating fevers as altogether a novelty, originating in the middle of the 17th century, and having no discoverable connexion with the English Sweating Sickness. There have been in Germany, since the year 1652, many visitations of miliary fever; but this disease did not increase much in extent until about the year 1715, when it spread into France and the neighbouring countries, particularly Piedmont, [1] whilst England remained almost entirely free from it. The French epidemics were, upon the whole, much more severe than the German; and on this account we select one of the most ancient, and also the most recent of them, in order to give a general view of miliary fever, as compared with the English Sweating Sickness.

The miliary fever first appeared in Picardy, in the year 1718, in le Vimeux (Vinnemacus pagus), a district on the north of the Somme and on the south of the Bresle and the department of the Lower Seine. It increased annually in extent; most places in Picardy were visited by it, and it was not long before is was seen in Flanders. [2]

We are still in possession of a very distinct account, which we will here detail, of an epidemic at Abbeville in the year 1733, where the miliary fever had existed fifteen years previously. There were scarcely any premonitory symptoms, but the disease commenced at once with pinching pains in the stomach, extreme prostration of strength, dull head-ache, and difficulty of breathing, interrupted by sighing. Patients complained of violent heat, and were bathed in a pungent sweat of foul odour, while nausea was occasionally felt. Sparks appeared before the eyes, and the countenance became flushed. Patients were tormented with burning thirst; and yet the tongue was as moist as in perfect health. The pulse was frequent and undulating, without hardness; and in the course of a few hours, an insufferable itching came on over the whole body, accompanied by distressing jactitation: upon this, thickly studded, red, round pustules, not bigger than mustard-seeds, broke out, wherefrom patients emitted an extremely disagreeable urinous odour, which was imparted to those who were about their persons. Sometimes they had evacuations, at other times they suffered from constipation, but all complained
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[1] On this point see Allioni, who drew his classical description of miliary fever from the Piedmont epidemics.
[2] Bellot, An febri putridae, Picardis Suette dictu sudorifera? Diss. praes. Ott. Gas. Barfeknecht. Paris, 1733. 4to.


of want of sleep; and when they felt an inclination to doze, they were again aroused by fresh chilliness. Many bled at the nose till they fainted; and with women, the menstrual discharge often appeared, though not at the proper time. The urine was at times deficient in quantity, at others discharged in abundance, and without any critical signs; if pale and plentiful, it betokened delirium; then the eyelids twitched convulsively, a humming noise commenced in the ears, and the patient tossed about restlessly. The pulse became strong, irregular, and, like the breathing, very quick. The countenance grew redder and redder; and soon after, the sufferers, as though struck by lightning, were seized with lethargy, and expired, generally in the act of coughing and spitting blood.

Such was the nature of the disease when it attacked many at once: there were, however, several varieties. With some the miliary vesicles broke out on the second day, with others not before the third; and if all went on favourably, they lost their redness on the seventh day, and the skin all over the body scaled of like bran. The fever was sometimes extremely violent; at others, without apparent cause, very mild; at least one might be deceived at the commencement of the attack, by the apparently favourably symptoms; for those who in the morning had scarcely any notable degree of fever, who neither suffered from any anxious sensation for violent heat, in whom no subsultus tendinum was perceptible, no want of perspiration, nor any retrocession of the eruption, were sometimes towards evening seized with phrenzy, and died in a state of lethargy. Evacuations, which alleviate other diseases, made this miliary fever worse. Favourable symptoms could never be depended on. In the midst of profuse perspiration the patient died, either from constipation or diarrhoea. A copious discharge of urine was a bad sign; composure was succeeded by delirium, cheerfulness by lethargy: the disease was throughout treacherous and disguised. It was particularly necessary for those suffering from pleurisy or any inflammatory fevers to be guarded against its approach. Many fell sacrifices to this epidemic who thought themselves in a state of convalescence; and with such it was easier to foretell than to prevent the consequences. In cases of this kind the miliary vesicles were less red and grew pale sooner; but if the disease attacked a healthy person, then they were redder, and continued longer. Of those who recovered, not a few suffered for many months, nay, even for a whole year, from night perspirations, without fever or sleeplessess, but with an eruption of little miliary vesicles, which disappeared [1] again on the slightest exposure to cold. The later miliary epidemic fevers in France, which are distinguished by the name of the Picardy Sweating Sickness, are generally very well described [2] so much so, that we have few epidemics of modern times whose course and succession we can trace so well. But the epidemic of 1821, which raged in the departments of the Oise, and of the Seine and Oise, from March to October, has been observed by all with the greatest care, including men of distinguished talent. [3]

We shall give the description of this disease. There were no constant premonitory symptoms; it often broke out quite suddenly, but many complained some days before of debility, despondency, want of appetite, nausea, head-ache; sometimes also of giddiness and slight chilliness. Many retired to rest in health, and awoke during the night with the disease, covered with a perspiration, which ceased only with death or recovery. With some the sweating was preceded for some hours, or even only for some moments, by a scarcely perceptible feverish commotion, accompanied with burning heat, or with a sensation of pain which ran through every limb, and nearly always with spasms in the stomach. With others the disease announced itself by lacerating rheumatic pains, which gradually increasing, they became bedridden. The mouth was foul, the taste at times bitter, the tongue white, more rarely tinged with yellow, and thus it remained till the patient was restored. The sufferer was shortly covered with a thick, peculiarly fetid sweat, that certainly produced alleviation, but became very intolerable to him from its unpleasant stench, which was even communicated to the clothes of the bystanders. In the mean time it was discovered by the pulse, that the fever had considerably abated; but, on the third day, the patient was seized with convulsive spasms in the stomach, great oppression at the chest, and a sensation of suffocation--symptoms which caused him insupportable anguish. These attacks, accompanied by hiccup and eructation, continued for several hours, and returned from time to time, an eruption, partly palpular, simultaneously breaking out first on the neck, then on the shoulders down to the hands and breast, less frequently on the thighs and face. The little
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[1] Rayer, Suette, p. 426, where the principal passage of Beliot's dissertation is reprinted word for word.
[2] Best in Rayer, p. 421. Not go well in Ozanam, T. iii. p. 105. The writers are very numerous.
[3] Rayer, Mazet, Bally, François, Pariset, and many others.


pimples were of a pale red colour and conical, with glistening heads, and between them appeared innumerable small miliary pustules, filled with transparent serous fluid, which soon thickened and assumed a whiter hue. At the time and previous to the breaking out of the exanthem, the patient experienced a very severe burning and pricking sensation in the skin, which nevertheless sometimes occurred on the second or fourth day, and which increased sometimes in one part, sometimes in another, when the sweating declined.

Towards the fifth day, however, after the sweating had entirely ceased, the complaint grew worse again. The spasms and paroxysms of suffocation returned, and they were succeeded by renewed eruptions of the exanthem; a decided improvement, however, shortly took place; the little pimples lost their redness, the miliary vesicles dried away, and at a period from the seventh to the tenth day recovery commenced under a general exfoliation of the cuticle. Sometimes the eruption did not appear, whether the patients were under medical treatment, or left to their own guidance, but with those few in whom there was an absence of miliary vesicles, that peculiar pricking and itching of the skin did not take place.

Between the fifth and seventh day the patients usually complained of great weakness, and had a desire to eat. A few tablespoonfuls of wine then agreed with them very well; for the rest, neither thirst nor lethargy was observable, but it was particularly remarkable that the urine was clear and abundant. Up to the seventh day a confined state of bowels was usual, and, with the exception of the already mentioned attacks of tightness and oppression, the breathing remained free, though with great sleeplessness, during the whole malady. Nothing morbid was to be observed in the chest, and the patients lay stretched out at full length, so that there was no occasion at any time to raise their heads.
Such was the regular course of this miliary fever, that its progress was often accelerated by very dangerous symptoms, and occasionally it proved fatal within a very few hours. If at the time of the attack the patients were very restless and talkative, the eyes glistening, the pulse, without being hard, tumultuous, and the edges of the tongue reddened, delirium soon succeeded, and then convulsions and death. Great depression of the spirits was a very bad symptom; bleeding was never of any avail, yet the menstrual discharge did not interrupt the course of the case. There was in general a great degree of malignancy perceptible in the malady, as was also rendered apparent by the course of the epidemic. If the miliary Sweating Fever broke out in a fresh place, two or three persons only were thereupon attacked, and that favourably, which led to a supposition that the evil had all passed away, for during the next fifteen or twenty days, not any fresh attacks were heard of. Suddenly, however, the epidemic reappeared with increased virulence. The great number of the sufferers spread consternation and terror amongst the inhabitants, and the cases of death became frequent. After this first burst of fury, the epidemic grew more mild again, so that many patients were not confined to their beds at all. This mitigation of the miliary fever was likewise manifested [1] by the prolongation of its course beyond the seventh day.

If we compare this epidemic with the one observed at Abbeville in 1773, we shall find between them but very trifling differences, which would appear still more clearly in some of the intermediate visitations, thus conforming to what has been observed in other eruptive maladies. It is consequently evident that the miliary fevers [2] which have appeared in France in recent times, do not differ in any essential point from those of more ancient date. The surest proof of their identity is, their persistence for nearly two centuries; and from the manner in which they have presented themselves to observation, they are to be considered as distinct from the English Sweating Sickness, though certainly allied to it. It would exceed our limits to pursue this inquiry further, but it may be as well to give the following short catalogue [3] of the most important miliary epidemics.

Table


Table

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[1] Bally and François, in the Journal Général de Médecine, T. LXXVII. p. 204. Compare Foderé, T. III. p. 227. Ozanam, T. III. p. 116. Bayer, Suette, p. 148. Mal. d. 1. p. T. I. p. 320.
[2] We may add to them also those observed in the South of Germany, in the aetiology of which Schönlein lays much stress on the contamination of the air in the process of steeping hemp. Vortlesungen, II. p. 324.
[3] It is not complete, but may render apparent the power and extent of the disease. See Rayer, Suette, p. 465.

SECT. 3.-THE ROETTINGEN SWEATING SICKNESS.

We now come to a phenomenon which, notwithstanding its short duration and very limited extension, is one of the inmost memorable of this century. Up to the present time, its real importance has not been recognised, because the clouds of selfsufficient ignorance have prevented our taking a survey of the formation of diseases, throughout long periods of time. It has been sunk for an age in the sea of oblivion, from whence we will now draw it forth to the light of day.

In November, 1802, a very hot and dry summer had been succeeded by incessant rain. Thick fogs spread over the country, and enveloped such places in central Germany as were inaccessible to ventilation. Amongst others, the small Franconian town of Roettingen, situated on the river Tauber, and surrounded by mountains. [1] Scarcely had a few weeks elapsed, when unexpectedly, towards the 2oth of November, an extremely fatal disease broke out in the town, which was without example in the memory of its inhabitants, and totally unknown to the physicians of the country.

Strong vigorous young men were suddenly seized with unspeakable dread; the heart became agitated and beat violently against the ribs, a profuse,sour, ill-smelling perspiration broke out over the whole body, and at the same time, they experienced a lacerating pain in the nape of the neck, as if a violent rheumatic fever had taken possession of the tendinous tissues. This pain ceased sometimes very quickly, and if it then shifted to the chest, the distressing palpitation of the heart recommenced; a spasmodic trembling of the whole body ensued; the sufferers fainted, their limbs became rigid, and thus they breathed their last. In most cases, all this occurred within four and twenty hours. They did not all, however, succumb under the first attack, but as soon as
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[1] At that time inhabited by about two hundred and fifty country people. Sinner. p. 7.


the accelerated pulse had sunk to the lowest ebb of smallness and feebleness, a corresponding effect being observable in the respiration, the violent pain would in some cases return to the outward parts. The patient then felt a benumbing pressure and stiffness in the nape of the neck; and the pulse and respiration became restored again as in health, but the perspiration continued to pour incessantly down the skin.

This apparent safety was, however, very deceptive, for a renewed palpitation of the heart unexpectedly commenced, accompanied by a feeble pulse; and then death was often inevitable. It was remarkable, that the patients, though bathed in perspiration, had very little thirst, and the tongue was not dry, nor ever even foul, but retained its natural moisture. With most, however, the urine was scanty; as the skin, under the increasing debility, permitted too much fluid to stream forth through its pores. 1f the disease passed of without heating sudorifics, then in general no eruption made its appearance. The malady then continued till the sixth day, but on the first only did it display its malignant symptoms, for by the second, the sweating diminished and lost every unfavourable quality, so that increased transpiration of the skin, without any other symptoms of importance, alone remained, and on the sixth day the patient was perfectly restored.

Had there been in Roettingen a physician at hand from the commencement, well skilled in medical history, and who would have adopted the old English treatment of the Sweating Sickness, this new fever would have appeared but as a perfectly mild disease, and would certainly have carried off but few of the inhabitants of this peaceful little town. As it was, however, the scenes of Lübeck and Zwickau were renewed, and it seemed as if the innumerable victims to the hot treatment, and to Kegeler's truculent medical work, had descended to the grave in vain. The sufferers were, as in the sixteenth century, literally stewed to death! for the moment the people imagined that they knew how nature meant to escape, they ordered feather-beds to be heaped on the perspiring patient, so that the mouth and nose alone remained uncovered. Doors and windows were tightly closed, and the stove emitted a glowing heat, whilst a most intolerable odour of perspiration streamed forth from beneath the broad and lofty beds; added to which, that two and even more patients were often lying in the same room; nay, even stowed together under the same mountain of feathers, and in order that inward heat might not be wanting, pots of theriaca were swallowed, and the patient was incessantly plied with elder electuary. Thus the bad humours were expelled together with the perspiration; and whether the sufferers were suffocated, or surmounted, as by a miracle, this mal-treatment of nature, a conviction was felt, that the most salutary remedies had been employed, and when at last eruptions of various colours broke out, it was considered as certain, that the poison had been carried off in them. The citizens of Roettingen, therefore, fell into the same erroneous opinion, which, upheld by medical schools, had, time immemorial, increased inflammatory diseases, particularly the exanthematous, and caused them to become malignant. The above-mentioned eruptions were of various sorts; miliary vesicles of every form and colour, filled with an acrid fluid; actual blistery eruptions (pemphigus), and even petechi and it is to be observed, that the patients, during the first days of the sweating fever, never suffered from that peculiar pricking sensation over the whole body which precedes the eruption of miliaria, but complained only, and that not always, of a local itching, where the eruption had broken out. It was equally rare to observe a regular desquamation of the skin, and it is therefore to be assumed, that the eruptions were only symptomatic, and not by any means necessarily connected with the disease, as in the decidedly miliary fevers.

The disease excited, from its very commencement, the greatest consternation; and as it was increased, even from the first days of its appearance, by the sudorific system of treatment, deaths were multiplied; the continual peal of funeral bells struck mortal terror, as of old at Shrewsbury, into the hearts of both sick and healthy; and this oppressed little town was shunned as a pesthole by the inhabitants of the surrounding neighbourhood. At the commencement of the disease, they were entirely without medical advice, till a skilful physician arrived from the vicinity, [1] and as most of the inhabitants were already attacked with the sweating fever, he immediately prescribed the proper treatment. But the powers of one man are not sufficient, amid such confusion, to contend with the deeply-rooted prejudices of the people, and so they continued in most houses to expel by heat and theriaca both perspiration and life together; till at last, on the third of December, Dr. Sinner of Würzburg arrived, without whom the remembrance of this remarkable disease would have been obliterated, and conjointly with his gallant colleague, like the anonymous physician formerly in Zwickau, subdued the destructive prejudices of
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[1] Dr. Thein, government physician of the town of Aub.


the people. He found eighty-four patients [1] under piles of featherbeds, who, when pure air was admitted, breathed once more freely, and by a prudent cooling system, all recovered easily, and without danger, one only excepted. His method reminds us of the old English treatment. [2] The disease was confined entirely to Roettingen; it did not make its appearance anywhere beyond the gates of this little town. On the fifth of December, however, clear, frosty weather set in; from that time no new cases occurred, and all traces of this Roettingen sweating fever, which was never either preceded or followed by miliary fever in any part of Franconia, have from that time disappeared.

The resemblance of this fever to the English Sweating Sickness is manifest, and is proved even by the short (only ten days') duration of the visitation, which, as we have stated, is a most essential characteristics of the English sweating epidemic, at least as it appeared in Germany; the miliary epidemics always have lasted a much longer period. But if we confine ourselves merely to the symptoms of the disease, we shall find, that in the Roettingen sweating fever, there are, throughout, none that can be considered essential, except the palpitation of the heart, accompanied with anguish, the profuse perspiration, and the rheumatic pains in the nape of the neck, which never were wanting in any case; and the very same symptoms are clearly and perceptibly to be discerned in like proportion as compared with others, in the representation of the English Sweating Sickness; whereas, the eruptions were altogether as unessential as in the epidemic of the sixteenth century. The irritability of the skin, and tendency to dangerous metastases, were less marked in the Roettingen fever than in the English Sweating Sickness; for the patients could, without injury, change their linen in the midst of the perspiration, which, in the English Sweating Sickness, could not have been done without fatal consequences; but this difference can easily be accounted for, from the greater degree of suffering in the latter disease than in the former. It only now remains to examine the duration of the disease, and here we plainly perceive that the principal paroxysm was over in the Roettingen epidemic within the first four and twenty hours,
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[1] The whole number of cases and of deaths is not stated. Dr. Sinner found nine bodies, none of which had been opened, shortly before the cessation of the disease.
[2] Everything heating was avoided; the air was cautiously purified, cooling beverage was given, and contrary to the method of Brown, at that time in vogue, few medicines such as valerian, spirits of hartshorn, Hoffman's drops, &c., were employed. Blisters were of service, and, likewise, under some circumstances, camphor. The convalescents were well nourished.


at least when it was undisturbed by treatment; and the sole symptom which continued until the sixth day-the increased perspiration (we speak here only of perfectly pure cases)-could only reasonably be regarded as a sequela. The crisis did not occur all on a sudden, as in the English Sweating Sickness, but this can not constitute any essential difference.

We do not hesitate, therefore, to pronounce the Roettingen fever to have been the same disease as the English Sweating Sickness. To give, however, this phenomenon its proper interpretation-to have a clear conception of the causes which again drew down from the clouds, into the midst of Germany, this mist-born spectre of 1529, and allowed it to expend its brief fury upon a single place, is beyond the power of human wisdom. Science is not comprehensive enough to discover, in the crossings of these unknown comet-paths, the moving causes of this visitation of disease. But as all insight into the works of nature must be proceded by a strict investigation and search after phenomena in all countries, at all times, and under all circumstances of development, so an improved knowledge of diseases and of the whole human system, will not fail to follow, when the investigations of epidemics throughout extensive periods have increased in number and success.
 

The present age demand such a knowledge of medical men, whose vocation it is to investigate life minutely in all its bearings. It demands of them an historical pathology, and to this branch of the study of nature is the present work intended to contribute.

CHILD-PILGRIMAGES.

TRANSLATED BY

ROBERT H. COOKE, M.R.C.S.,

AUTHOR OF "EPIDEMIC MENTAL DISEASES OF CHILDREN,"
LATE SURGEON TO THE NEW ASYLUM FOR FATHERLESS CHILDREN.

CHILD-PILGRIMAGES.

MENTAL emotions, as causes of nervous disorders, may be regarded from a purely physical point of view. They produce definite sensations, differing in nature and in force, whatever be the thoughts whence they have arisen, and whatever the department of the mind to which they appertain.

These sensations have their seat in the sympathetic nerve: they have therefore the peculiarities of all perceptions within this sphere; that is to say, they have not the clearness and definiteness of sensations in the other two spheres, without, however, being on that account less violent and agitating; and they affect the consciousness in quite another manner. Many of them indeed never affect it at all, but do not any the less exercise a secondary action on the brain and spinal marrow. Those which are more clearly marked can be depicted more definitely, either directly or by comparisons-anxiety, a feeling of comfort in all its stages of exaltation up to ecstasy, an oppressive painful sensation, with its well-known actual transitions to decided pain of individual parts, are common enough, but language could more easily describe the less perfect senses, than it could give names to the innumerable conditions which are observed in this dark world of sensations. The patient, who himself has usually no clear idea of what is the case with him, has no words, or, if he has them, they are not understood by the observer, unless he be profoundly versed in these subjects, and for this it is essential that he have himself passed through like sufferings, and have observed them attentively in himself-a demand, that, indispensable as it is, but very few can satisfy. For this reason the emotions, and especially their physical aspect, with which the physician is chiefly concerned, have never been amenable to a profound psychological research. With the objective phenomena, an acute and persevering observer can easily make himself acquainted, but the subjective sensations are always in their very nature obscure, and it is no wonder that the physicians, who in general are the only true psychologists, have always been deterred by the great difficulties of this inquiry, and that even in recent times the improved knowledge of the sympathetic nerve has added far less light than might have been expected from an investigation in this more tangible field.

I will not here give a review of the emotions; still less will I exhibit the chaos of opinions and doctrines, which have received currency in science from the early Greek philosophies downwards, not even those which have been confirmed by experience. The present state of our knowledge only requires us to start with the axiom, that in the excitement of actual nervous disorders by mental emotions, the sensation aroused by them in the sympathetic nerve is the proximate pathological element from which issues every development of morbid phenomena in all their groups. The universal course in these cases is as follows: any thought or idea seizes the mind, that is, in its purely somatic acceptation. A nerve-motion radiates from the brain to the sympathetic nerve, and produces here, either in the thorax or the abdomen, a sensation which may, or may not, be attended by organic activity or by motion. This sensation passes by without further consequences if it is slight, or short-lived, like all sensations in whatever sphere. But if it is violent, or of long duration, it enters into the category of nerve-irritants, and at once engages the whole reflex activity; that is to say, it operates according to the first and most essential law of nervous action. This operation may now either be limited to the sympathetic nerve within the circle of which the most diverse reflex phenomena may occur, or it transfers itself to the spinal marrow or the brain. In the first case we see, apart from the familiar consequences in the organic sphere, painful and motional disorders, of which colic and heartburn are very common instances; in the second case motional disorders almost exclusively, from shivering to chorea, catalepsy, epilepsy; in the third case mental disorders of most diverse kinds, but most frequently combinations of cerebral and spinal disease; in short, in all spheres every conceivable form of nervous disorder.

In respect to the excitement of particular forms of nervous disease, distinctions may unquestionably be established between the individual emotions and the corresponding passions which arise out of them; but what with the infinite variety of the effects of nervous irritants in general, and the countless play of the sympathies, it is clear that these distinctions can only be maintained very generally. Single cases are of little account here; the question is of the effects of emotions and passions on the large scale, when they become dominant in human society, attaining, therefore, more readily, their highest pitch and displaying their properties in the multitudes. In reality at times there appear, widely diffused and dominant, certain groups of nervous diseases, which stand in very manifest connexion with the predominant emotions and passions, as also with the sentiments and the mental bias of nations. We might have been able to point to much that is more instructive than what is now procurable, but that, unhappily, attentive observers have always been rare, and phenomena of the highest importance to psychologists have not been transmitted to posterity, by those to whom they were tedious because they were ordinary and of daily occurrence.

Of all the emotions it is quite manifest that those of religion operate most upon the popular masses; it is therefore these above all others which have furnished pathology with a multitude of forms of nervous diseases, most various and dismal, often extraordinary and hardily comprehensible, seldom therefore or almost never understood, and this in nations most diverse in creed, from the ancient mythology down to the most recent Christian sects. In this respect no confession appears to have any advantage over the others, when it is pushed to a certain morbid elevation of religious feeling. In their effect on the nervous system they all agree, and it is chiefly mental and motional, that is to say, cerebral and spinal, diseases which we see arise from the source of overstrained religious feelings. The former-because the presentations of faith, whose root is in the reason, in the knowledge of man's relations to a higher state, the essential distinctive of the human from the animal soul-these can easily be overstrained or thrown into confusion by bodily feelings. With these presentations there is then associated the poetic play of religious phantasies, or they are darkened by the black bile of superstition. But from either of these the brain, the organ of spiritual activity, is as impotent to guard itself as from the sweetest fairy-like juggleries of fever-delirium, or the black cruel forms of incubus.

The latter-the motional diseases, because overstretched religious feelings lay hold on nothing easier than on the spinal marrow, which stands in the closest connexion with the sympathetic nerve.

The present were exactly the time to look closely at the religious emotions on their pathological side, however we may incur the risk in investigations of this kind of being misunderstood, or, as from of old has been the case, of being taxed with heresy by the orthodox of all sects. Within the last fifteen years (1845) they have strikingly increased in all nations and in all confessions. Much as they have sought to obtain currency in circles small and great, they have however not yet robbed this age of its character; it is still an age of reason, of victorious struggle against the natural limitations of human life, an age of secular interests, as it is called, but in a good sense. In science, as in life, there always must be and always has been a contrast-the head of the medal and its reverse. It is also very clear that they are as yet far from having the importance they attained in the olden time; they are neither so universal nor so true as in some former centuries; they usually have en end in view, and a political tinge. They lack therefore the potent all-engrossing sincerity, which has been in former timer observed in them; but they do not on that account belie their essential nature. The physical sensations of overstrained religious emotion are in general very intense. We distinguish them as disagreeable-oppression and anxiety; and agreeable, pleasurable, bordering upon voluptuousness, and often enough passing quite into it. In this case the transition to the sexual sphere is easy and imperceptible, and they are associated with hysterical and hypochondriacal conditions, as by numberless examples is notorious. It is indeed well established that hysterical sexual excitement and the condition of worn-out hypochondriacal debauchees produce especial tendency to all sorts of bigotry and superstition. Moreover overstrained true religious feelings entirely agree with those which are artificial and simulated in their operation on the nervous system; indeed the latter are more ready than the former to excite nervous diseases, because they are forced, and therefore from the first put the nerves into a forced unnatural condition.

Demonomanias, convulsions, somnambulism, catalepsy, motional disorders of every kind, are manifested at the present day in all places where fanatical sects pursue their practices, with quite as much importance as at any other time, only in more limited circles. In these cases it is easy to observe that in the great majority of the lookers-on nearly the same excitement is evinced as in any previous century, and those morbid phenomena are very commonly regarded as the revelations of a most hallowed inspiration, and even as miracles, when they are often nothing more than the physical consequences of a nervous irritant. Practical psychology seems in many circles not yet to have got out of its infancy.

With the present time I will not now occupy myself, though it affords abundance of instructive matter for inquiries of this sort. Instead of this I will set up a few pictures from the remote part, which will be found to exhibit speaking and well-marked features.

The Child-pilgrimages of the Middle Ages have not as yet in modern times been sufficiently investigated. I might have appended them to my monograph of the Dancing Mania, but did not wish to overload that work, which, as it is, contains a great variety of matter. They have all a common cause, religious enthusiasm, and agree therefore in the main, however different their religious moving forces and however unequal in respect to their extent.

The greatest phenomenon of this kind, to which indeed history has nothing similar to present, was the Boy Crusade of the year 1212. Of this event we have the accounts of eye-witnesses which are entirely worthy of confidence (for they are mostly state documents) but from which accurate pathological observation is confessedly not to be expected. At this time the Holy Land had been, as is known, long again reduced under the sway of the Saracens. Pain at this loss, and with it a longing for the regaining of the dearest possession of Christendom, was spreading with renewed sincerity and force among all the nations of the West. Modern historians have judged the idea of the Crusades from an intellectual stand-point; from such a point it must be confessed that it appears very worldly and trivial; but such a manner of regarding it is fundamentally false. On the small scale, as well as in the gross, it is just the nature of the emotions and passions to subdue and take full possession of the understanding and all the other mental agencies. The greatest convulsions of the world have been accomplished by mental excitements, the springs of which could not always stand at the tribunal of the understanding. These excitements were not on that account the leas true and honorable. The only thing that is absolutely unworthy of human nature is that religious intoxication which spiritual ambition, itself destitute of religion, excites in the ignorant multitudes for its own purposes.

The idea, then, of the reconquest of the Holy Land took hold of men's minds at that time not less powerfully than, for instance, the mania of Martyrdom at the beginning of the 4th century, in which children in great numbers took their share. Whoever observes children attentively, sees readily that they in their own fashion decidedly sympathize with all the excitements of adults, and for this reason, that the strongest impulse in them is that of imitation. Religious and political passions without exception, even to the most petty excitements, acquire such mastery over them, as to manifest themselves in much greater strength, and apparently at the first view in much greater absurdity sometimes, in them than in their exemplars. The tenderness of their nervous systems occasions in them much stronger physical sensations, and in this, as well as in the small strength of their will, lies the ground that nervous disorders are a more common result in them than in adults. The boundary line between the precursory state and the disease is here plainly and sharply drawn; it is the suspension of the will, which Paracelsus has already very accurately and acutely alluded to in connexion with Chorea.

In the year 1212 the minds of men were in that state that some outbreak of the overstrained feelings could not long be deferred. The first impulse was given by a shepherd-boy, Etienne, of the village of Cloies in Vendôme, of whom wonderful narratives spread through France with inconceivable rapidity. He held himself for an ambassador of the Lord, who had appeared to him in the guise of an unknown foreigner, received some bread from him, and given him a letter to the King. His sheep were said to have knelt before him to worship him, a miracle which perhaps was hardly required to invest him with the nimbus of sanctity. The shepherd-boys of the neighbourhood gathered about him, and soon there streamed together more than thirty thousand souls to partake of his revelations, and to be thrown into ecstasies by his discourses. In St. Denys he performed miracles, he was the saint of the day, the messenger of God, before whom the people bent the knee; and when the king, concerned at this intoxication of a multitude that could not be disregarded, but not without having asked the opinion of the University of Paris, forbade the assemblies, no one regarding the temporal power. Every day there arose new eight or ten year old prophets, who preached, worked miracles, animated whole armies of children, and led them full of transport to the Holy Stephen. When any asked these children in pilgrims' coats whither they were going, they answered as from one mouth, "To God." Their orderly processions were headed by oriflams, many carried wax-candles, crosses, and censers, and they sang incessantly hymns of fervid devotion and to new melodies: the words, "Lord, raise up Christendom," and "give us back the true Cross," were often repeated in them. It is to be regretted that the witnesses of a movement which snatched the whole child-world as if into a whirlpool, have not committed to writing either the songs or the melodies to which they were sung; for it cannot be doubted that with them some of the fairest flowers of popular poetry have been lost, however overwrought and morbid may have been the excitement which gave occasion to them. [1]

The consternation of the parents at this event was boundless. No persuasion, nor even the despair and tears of the mothers, could keep back the boys. Were they hindered, they wept day and night, pined with sorrow, and fell ill with trembling of the limbs, so that at last of necessity they were let go. Others made light of locks and bolts, found means to elude the most vigilant attendants, to join the representatives of the shepherd-boy, Stephen, and at last even to behold this holy crusade-preacher. And there was no distinction of rank: the children of counts and barons ran away, as well as the sons of citizens and the poorest peasant boys, only the rich parents, when they could not keep their children back, sent guides to accompany them, who quietly may have rescued many. Many parents summoned their children to take the cross, others yielded to what they were unable to prevent, not venturing to oppose the eulogists of the little crusade-preachers. Only a few intelligent men, among whom were even some of the clergy, shook their heads, but it was in vain that they sought to restrain the multitude from their giddy infatuation, which must soon enough carry them to an abyss. No one of them ventured to utter his mind aloud, fearful of being charged with heresy, warned also by the disregard given to even the king's command.

The movement did not last long, before there was assembled at Vendôme an innumerable army of boys, armed and unarmed, many on horseback, the most on foot, and among them not a few girls in male clothing. Their number is estimated at more than thirty thousand.

They all acknowledged the beloved Stephen as their Lord, and their guide to the Holy Land, which they purposed to wrest from the Saracens. They put him in a carriage, which they decorated with flags and tapestries, and the most noble youths, in splendid equestrian accoutrement, formed his body-guard, which he stood in need of to restrain the eagerness of his believers, each of whom blessed himself if he could but carry away a few threads of his dress, after his word had kindled to a glow the flame of his devotion and enthusiasm. On occasions of this kind there arose sometimes such a dense throng about the carriage of the children's prophet, that not a few were squeezed to death. The
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[1] One of these hymns, with its melody, has been discovered since this pamphlet was written. See Evangelical Christendom, 1850. (Translator.)


extraordinary procession now set itself in movement from Vendôme to Marseilles. It was July, it was hot and dry, but none of the difficulties of the pilgrimage, neither the thirst on the hot and dusty plain of Provence, nor the hunger to which the poorer must have been exposed after the first days of the journey, stifled the flame of devotion and enthusiasm. "To Jerusalem" was the cry of the children, when they were asked by the astonished beholders whither their pilgrimage was; and none doubted Stephen's promise that the sea would go back before them, and they should reach the Holy Land dry-shod. As a matter of course, they were joined by the usual hangers-on of armies, a troop of miscreants who threw themselves like vultures on the welcome prey, and by cheating and open robbery so miserably stripped them, that probably the most were only maintained by the benevolence of the inhabitants. But the worst awaited them in Marseilles. Two merchants of that place, whose names have been transmitted to posterity, Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus, vied with the inhabitants in affectionate reception of the young pilgrims, attended their religious exercises with devout aspect, and promised to take them to Palestine for God's blessing only. The boy-army was still so numerous as to fill seven large ships, and thus the little crusaders set sail enthusiastically courageous, and full of gratitude to their benefactors. But two days after their departure a storm arose, two ships struck on St. Peter's Island, and not a soul was saved. The bodies were collected and buried in a church erected by Gregory IX. to their memory (Ecclesia novorum innocentium). The other five ships steered to Bougia and Alexandria, and the young crusaders were here all sold as slaves to the Saracens, and it is certain that none saw their native land again. The two betrayers afterwards met with their reward. The Emperor Frederick II. had them hanged in Sicily.

Such was the end of the children's crusade in France. Not quite so unhappy was the fate of the youthful crusaders from Germany, where the agitation was quite as great at that time as in France, especially in the Rhine countries and far eastward, though we are not in a position to define its limits more exactly. Here also there arose child-prophets, and carried their playmates away to the same mad crusading devotion, the only thought of which was the Holy Sepulchre. It was a literal repetition of that which occurred in France, though the little fanatics could not have received the smallest intelligence of the events at Vendôme. Their costume was that of the unarmed pilgrims in the earlier crusades, with the sclavina marked, of course, with the cross, and they carried the pilgrim's staff and wallet (burdones, scarcellas). In number they perhaps even exceeded the French children's army, and everywhere notice was taken of their hymns with which they inspirited themselves to their holy task. They were not united under one leader, but hastened in two detachments to the sea, which they also confidently believed would go back before them.

One of these detachments, under the leadership of one Nicolas (of whom it is not known what was his age, or whence he came), went up by the Rhine, crossed Mont Cenis, and reached Genoa, still with a strength of 7000. It may not unfairly be assumed that at first it was at least twice as numerous, for the passes of the Alps were very difficult in the middle Ages. Only the most robust and the older children could reach so distant a goal, the feeble fell ill on the journey and starved in the mountain gorges. Many of them were of noble families, and were better cared for. Guides and nurses were provided for them, and these were soon joined by the usual swarms of sisters-errant. In Genoa it was believed that the thoughtful parents had even been mindful of the entertainment which companions of this sort could offer them. But this we will leave undetermined. The Genoese did not at all believe in their devoutness; they explained the undertaking as an outbreak of self-will and childish levity, apprehended scarcity of provisions or some other peril to their state, thought that they would be rendering a service to the Emperor, who was in constant feud with the Pope, if they received the little pilgrims and knights, and shut the gates in their faces. They were only admitted after some negotiations on the 24th of August; but by this time many had wearied of the crusading adventure, had sought and obtained hospitality, and therefore quietly kept back.

Some of them, recommended by their illustrious descent, formed closer connexions with patrician families, and are said to have become the founders of a rich and mighty posterity. The others were compelled, after a few days, to withdraw. They did not take ship, however, but scattered themselves in different directions. Many attempted to return to Germany, fell into extreme misery, and some, the best of perhaps of all, were retained as servants in various parts of the country. The few who saw their fatherland again were received with contempt and derision, perhaps even by those who with hypocritical officiousness had helped them at their departure; for false enthusiastic excitements readily veer into the opposite state of feeling, especially when their vanity has been shown by the result, from which alone the multitude judges. But it was a justification of all those thoughtful men who had declared the undertaking to be an adventure without sense and reason, and held the mania of child-pilgrimage as a delusion of Satan. A part of the army, however, remained faithful to its purpose, but divided into separate masses, which marched from Liguria through part of Italy. A number of boys made a pilgrimage to Rome, and found an opportunity of presenting themselves to the Pope, who received them graciously. He did not, however, absolve them from their obligation to the Cross, but took an oath of them to go out to the conquest of Jerusalem when they should be grown up. Hard and cruel as this clerical procedure was, at a time in which at least 60,000 families were thrown into the deepest trouble by a foolish fanaticism, it yet corresponded exactly to the policy of the Romish chair. For it was by emissaries from Rome that the agitation for crusades had been excited in France and Germany; and when the Pope heard of the events in Vendôme, he had expressed joy at the unfortunate result of his endeavour, and had mourned deeply at the apathy of the adults, among whom not an arm was anywhere lifted for the holy object.

Of the other child-army we have no accurate information. We do not even know the name of its leader: it is not improbable there were many, and all the greater must have been its ruin by the thieves and sharpers who joined it. The swarm of children, which certainly was not smaller than the army of Nicolas that was scattered in Ligunia, took its way through the wild gorges of Uri, over St. Gotthard; a few bands may also have gone over the Splügen. But in Lombardy the little crusaders were received with great coldness, and were ridiculed for their blind belief that the sea would open for them a dry road to Jerusalem. Many perished with hunger and destitution. Others were taken into service for their bare sustenance; the strongest in faith and in body, whom nothing could turn aside from their purpose, reached to Brindisi, and here and in other seaport towns they fell into the hands of slave-merchants, who carried them a welcome booty to the Saracens.

It seems that more adults and women joined the German than the French child-crusade. And the number of girls under age is also said to have been greater. Proportionally more fatal was the moral corruption, which indeed was without bounds, so that of the survivors there were probably few that escaped falling victims to seduction and infamy.

The Second children's pilgrimage falls only twenty-five years later; so that the assumption of a morbid excitability of the child-world at all this time appears to be justified. It was confined to the city of Erfurt, and the phenomenon was very transient, but not the less presents all the distinctive marks of a religious convulsion, and exhibited more of disease than other child-pilgrimages, as far at least as has come down to posterity. On the 15th July, 1237, there assembled, unknown to their parents, more than 1000 children, left the town by the Löber Gate, and wandered, dancing and leaping, by the Steigerwald to Armstadt. A congress such as this, as if by agreement, resembles an instinctive impulse as in animals, when, for instance, swallows and storks collect for their migration; the same phenomenon has doubtless taken place in all children's pilgrimages, it was also remarked by eye-witnesses of the first of them, in a manner characteristic of the middle Ages. It was not till the next day that the parents learned the occurrence, and they fetched their children back in carts. No one could say who had enticed them away. Many of them are said to have continued ill some time after, and in particular to have suffered from trembling of the limbs, perhaps also from convulsions. The whole affair is obscure, and so little account bas been taken of it by contemporaries, that the chronicles only speak of the fact, and say nothing of its causes. The only probable conjecture is that the many noisy and pompous festivities connected with the canonization of St. Elisabeth, the Landgravine of Thuringia, had excited in the child-world of Erfurt this itch for devotion, which sought to relieve itself by displays of spinal activity. For this child-pilgrimage is in very near proximity to the Dancing Mania.

Still much more obscure is a child-pilgrimage of 1458, of which the motives were quite clearly religious. It is probably, at present, almost impossible to trace the chain of ideas which occasioned it; it is enough that it was in honour of the Archangel Michael. More than 100 children from Hall, in Suabia, set out, against the will of their parents, for Mont St. Michel in Normandy. They could not by any means be restrained, and if force was employed, they fell severely ill, and some even died. The mayor, unable to prevent the journey, kindly furnished them a guide for the long journey, and an ass to carry their luggage. They are said to have actually reached the then world-renowned Abbey, now, as is well known, a state prison, and to have performed their devotions there. We have absolutely no other information of them, and it appears that this child-pilgrimage, which falls to the time when chorea was very frequent and widely spread in Germany, has excited even much less attention than the migration of the children of Erfurt in the year 1237.

AUTHORITIES.

1. From the Chronicle of the Monastery of the Dead Sea. [Ex Chronico Coenobii Mortui Maria. Ab anno 1113 usque ad annum 1235. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de in France. Tom. xviii. Paris, 1822. Fol. p. 355. C]

At the same time in the realm of Francs, boys and girls, with some youths and old men, carrying banners, wax candles, crosses, censers, made processions, and went through the cities, villages, and castles, singing aloud in the French language, "Lord God, raise up Christendom; Lord God, give us back the true cross." They continually sang, not only these words, but also many others, because there were many processions, and each procession varied them to its own liking. And this thing, never heard of in past ages, was a wonder to many, because, as they believed, it was a presage of future things, namely, of those which came to pass in the following year. For the Roman Legate (Robert de Corçon) came within the borders of France, and marked with the cross, in the name of the Crucified One, an abundant multitude, the number of which the knowledge of God alone can compute.

2. Anonymi Continuatio appendicis (Robertus de Monte ad Sigebertum, Abbot of Mont St. Michel). Ibid. p. 344. A.

3. From the Chronicle of an anonymous Canon of Laon. Ibid. (p. 102.) p. 71.5.

In the month of June of the same year (1212) a certain boy, by occupation a shepherd, of a village named Cloies, near the town of Vendôme, said that the Lord had appeared to him in the form of a poor foreigner, and had received bread from him, and had delivered to him letters to be taken to the King of the French. When he came, together with his fellow shepherd-boys, there assembled to him from diverse parts of Gaul nearly xxx. thousand persons. When he tarried at Saint Denys the Lord wrought many miracles by him, as many have witnessed. There ware also very many other boys who were held in great veneration by the common multitude in many places, because they also were believed to work miracles; to whom a multitude of boys gathered, as wishing to proceed under their guidance to the holy boy Stephen. All acknowledged him as master and prince over them. At length the king, having consulted the masters of Paris upon the assembly of boys, at his command they returned to their home; and thus that childish enthusiasm, as it was lightly commenced, was as lightly terminated. But it seemed to many that, by means of such innocents gathered of their own accord, the Lord would do something great and new upon the earth, which issued far otherwise.

4. Matthew Paris, Monk of St. Albans. (Historia Major, juxta exemplar Londinense 1571, verbatim recusa. Ed. Willielmo Wats. Londini 1640. Fol. p. 242.

In the course of the same year (1213), in the following summer, there arose in France a certain heresy never before heard of. For a certain boy, instigated by the enemy of mankind, a boy indeed in years, but most vile in his way of life, went through the cities and towns in the realm of the French, as though sent by the Lord, singing in French measures: "Lord Jesus Christ, give us back the Holy Cross," with many other things added. And when he was seen and heard by other boys of the same age, an infinite number followed him; who, wholly infatuated by the craft of the devil, left their fathers and mothers, their nurses and all their friends, singing in like manner as their master sang. Nor, wonderful to say, could either bolts restrain them, or the persuasion of their parents recall them from following their aforesaid master to the Mediterranean Sea, which crossing, they went on their way singing in orderly procession, and in troops. For now no city could hold them for their multitude. But their master was placed in a chariot adorned with coverings, and was surrounded with guards shouting about him, and armed. But such was their number that they crushed one another through excess of crowding. For he regarded himself blest who could carry away some threads or hairs from his garments. But at last, by the device of the old impostor Sathanas, they all perished either on land or in the sea.

5. Chronicle of Alberic, Monk of Liege. [Cronica Alberici Monachi trium fontium Leodinensis Dijocesis. In: G. G. Leibnitii Accessionum Historicarum Tomo II. Hannoverae 1698. 4to. p. 459.]

There happened in this year an expedition of young children miraculously, as it were, assembling from all parts; they came first from the parts of the city of Vendôme of the Parisii, who when they were about thirty thousand, came to Marseilles as wishing to go over the sea against the Saracens. But ribald and bad men joined to them, so corrupted the whole army, that, some perishing in the sea, some being put up for sale, few of so great a multitude returned, but of those who escaped thence the Pope gave a commandment, that when they should be old enough, they should go over the sea, having been marked with the cross. And the betrayers of these children are said to have been Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus, merchants of Marseilles, who being owners of ships, ought, so they promised them, to carry them over the sea for God's sake, without payment, and filled seven large ships with them, and when they had come with two days' sailing to Saint Peter's Island to the Hermit's Rock, a tempest arose and two ships perished, and all the children of those ships were drowned, and, after a time (as is said) Pope Gregory IX. founded in the same island the Church of the New Innocents, and appointed twelve prebendaries, and there are in that church the bodies of the children, which the sea threw up there, and to this day they are shown to pilgrims uncorrupted. But the betrayers succeeded in taking the other five ships to Bugia and Alexandria, and there they sold all those children to the princes of the Saracens and to merchants, from whom the Caliph bought for himself 400 all clerks, because thus he would separate them from the others, among whom were eighty all priests, and he treated them more honourably than was his wont. It is that Caliph of whom I have spoken above who studied at Paris in the dress of a clerk, and learned fully all that is known among us, and he now lately has left off sacrificing camel's flesh. The princes of the Saracens being assembled at Baldach in the same year in which the children were sold, they slew in their presence eighteen of these children by different kinds of martyrdom, because they would by no means relinquish the Christian faith, but cherished it diligently in slavery: he who said this, and was one of the above-said clerks whom the Caliph bought for himself, has faithfully reported that he has never heard that one of the above-said children apostatised from the Christian faith. And the two aforesaid betrayers, Hugh Ferreus and William Porcus, afterwards went to Mirabel, prince of the Saracens of Sicily, and wished to arrange with him the betrayal of the Emperor Frederic, but the Emperor by the grace of God triumphed over them, and hanged Mirabel with his two sons and those two traitors on one gallows, and after eighteen years he who reported this added that Mashemuch of Alexandria still kept carefully seven hundred, not now children, but men of full age.

6. Albert, Abbot of Stade, a contemporary. [Alberti Abbatis Stadensis Chronicon, a condito orbe usque ad A. Chr. 1256. In: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum. Ed. Joh. Schilterus. Argentorati 1702. Fol. p. 300.]

(Assembly of lunatic boys.) About that time boys, without a master, without a leader, from all the towns and cities of all countries, run with eager steps toward the parts beyond the sea, and when it was asked of them whither they were running, they answered: To Jerusalem, to get back the Holy Land. Very many of them were locked up by their parents, but in vain, for, breaking fastenings or walls, they run out. The Pope, having heard these reports, sighing said: These boys have laid it to us, that we sleep while they run for the recovery of the Holy Land. To this day it is not known what became of them. But many returned, of whom when the cause of the expedition was asked, they said that they knew not. Naked women also about the same time run through the towns and cities saying nothing.

7. Johanues Iperius, Abbot of St. Bertin's, 1366-1383, of little authority. [Chronicon Sythiense Sancti Bertini. Recueil des Histor. de la France et des Gaules. Tom. xviii. p. 593. p. 603 C.]

When at that time processions were being made through France to beseech the favour of God against the infidels, it came into the mind of a young shepherd in the diocese of Chartres, that he would go to the procession, and he went. Returning he found his sheep almost destroying the corn, and when he would drive them away, they bent their knees to him as if asking pardon. Which when it was spread abroad, they honoured him with too much attention, to whom in a short time there poured in from every part of the kingdom countless thousands of children, no one at all commanding or urging them; who, being asked whither they were going, replied all as with one breath: To God.

8. Vincentius, Bishop of Beauvais. [Bibliotheca Mundi, seu Speculi Majoris Vincentii Burgundi Praesulis Bellovacensis, ordinis praedicatorum, etc. Tomus quartus, qui speculum Historiale inscribitur. Opera et Studio Theologorum Benedictinorum Collegii Vedactini in Alma Academia
Duacensi. Duaci 1624. Fol. L. xxx. C. 5. p. 1238.]

Also in the above-mentioned year little boys, to about 20 thousand as it is reckoned, were marked with the cross, and coming in bands to various seaports, in particular, Marseilles and Brindisi, returned famished and stripped. But it was said that the Old Man of the Mountain, who had been used to bring up the Arsacidae from boyhood, had detained two European clerks in prison, and would never let them go, till he had received a faithful promise from them that they would bring him some boys of the realm of France. By them therefore the aforesaid boys were supposed to have been enticed by some false reports of visions, and by promises to them when they were marked with the cross.

9. Caffari (contemporary statesman) Annales Genuenses ab A. 1101. Libro IV. Col. 403. Muratori, T. VI.

But in the month of August, on the Sabbath day, VIII Calend. September, a certain Teutonic boy, named Nicolas, entered the city of Genoa for purposes of pilgrimage, and with him a great multitude of pilgrims carrying crosses and staves, in the judgment of a working man more than 7000, [thus of the 30,000, about a fourth part] men and women, boys and girls. And on the Lord's day following they departed from the city; but many men, women, boys, and girls of that number remained at Genoa.

10. Author unknown. [Fragmentum Historicum incerti auctoris, M. Alberti Argentinensis Chronico in manuscriptis codicibus praefixum, p. 74. Germaninae Historicorum illustrium Tomus unus, Christian-Urtisii fide et studio nunc editus. Francofurti 1585. Fol. p. 88.]

At that time there was made a foolish expedition, young and silly persons taking the mark of the cross without any discretion, rather for curiosity than for their salvation. Persons of both sexes, boys and girls, not under age only, but also grown up, married women with virgins, set out, going with empty purses not only through all Germany, but also through parts of Gaul and Burgundy; neither could they by any means be restrained by their parents and friends, but used all efforts to join that expedition, so that everywhere in the towns and in the country they left their tools and whatever they had in hand at the time, and joined the bands as they passed by. And as for such novelties we are often a folk of easy faith, many thought that this came to pass not through lightness of mind, but by a divine inspiration and a kind of piety. For which reason they also succoured them in their expenses, furnishing food and other necessary things.

But when the clergy and some others of sounder mind spoke against it, and judged that expedition vain and useless, the laics vehemently caviled, saying, that the clerks were unbelievers, and that they opposed this thing for envy and covetousness, rather than for truth and righteousness. But forasmuch as no affair that is commenced without the balancing of reason and without vigour of counsel, attains to a good conclusion; after this foolish multitude arrived at the parts of Italy, they were separated and scattered through the cities and towns, and many were kept by the inhabitants of the land as servants and handmaids. Others are said to have reached the sea, who were taken prisoners by the sailors and mariners, and carried to other distant parts of the earth. But the rest coming to Rome, when they saw that they could go no further, not being sustained with any authority, at last became aware that their labour was frivolous and empty: and yet they were by no means absolved from the vow of the cross, except the boys under the age of discretion, and those who were oppressed with old age. Therefore, thus deceived and perplexed, they began to return; and they who formerly used to pass through the countries in parties and troops, and never without the song of encouragement, now returning, singly and in silence, barefooted and famished, were a scoffing to all men: also many virgins were ravished, and lost the flower of their chastity.

11. Chronicle of the City of Genoa. [Chronica de Civitate Januensi, edita a Fratre Jacobo de Voragine ordinis Fratrum praedicatorum d. gr. Archiepiscopo Januense. usa Musatori, Rer. Ital. Scriptt. Tom. ix. p. 1. Col. (pag.) 45 E.]

In the year of the Lord MCCXXII (?) in the month of August, there came to Genoa a certain Theuton named Nicolas, in the habit of a pilgrim, and there followed him a great multitude of pilgrims both great and small, and even young children, and all had pilgrims' coats (sclavinas) marked with crosses, and pilgrims' staves (burdones), and pilgrims' wallets (scarsellas), saying that the sea would be dried up at Genoa, and thus they must go to Jerusalem.

But many of them were sons of nobles, whom their fathers had provided with harlots. But the Genoese agreed that they must withdraw from the city, partly because they thought they were prompted by levity more than by necessity; partly because they feared lest they should bring dearth into the city; partly because they apprehended danger to the city from so great a multitude; chiefly because the Emperor was then in rebellion with the Church, and the Genoese clave to the Church against the Emperor. After a short time all that thing came to nothing, because it was founded upon nothing.

12. Sicard, Bishop of Cremona, contemporary. [Sicardi Episcopi Cremonensis Chronicon. Muratori Rer. Ital. Scriptt. Tom. VII. Mediol. 1725. Fol. p. (col.) 624.)

In the same year, 1212, under the guidance of boys seemingly of twelve years, who said that they had seen a vision, and who took the sign of the cross, in the parts of Cologne, an innumerable multitude of poor people of either sex, and of boys, made pilgrimage through Germany, marked with the cross; and they came into Italy, saying with one heart and one voice, that they would cross the seas dry-shod, and recover the Holy Land of Jerusalem by the power of God. But at the end it all as it were came to nought. In the same year there was so mighty a famine, especially in Apulia and Sicily, that mothers even ate their children.

13. Lambert, monk of St. James' Monastery, Liege. [Lamberti Parvi, Leodinensis S. Jacobi Monasterii monachi Chronicon, a Reinero, ejusdem coenobii asceta continuatum. Vett. Scriptorum et Monumentorum historicorum dogmaticorum moralium amplissima collectio, Edmundi Martene et Ursini Durand. Tom V. Paris 1729. Fol. Col. (p.) 40.]

A wonderful movement of children as well from the Roman as from the Teutonic kingdom, and chiefly of shepherds, both of the male and of the female sex. But they wept most profusely whom their fathers and mothers did not suffer to go. We believe that this was effected by magical arts, because their labour had no results, for at the last they were dispersed, and their journey was brought to nought. But their intention was that they would cross the sea, and, which their fathers and kings had not done, recover the sepulcher of Christ; but because this work was not of God it had no effect. The heat was extremely great in the first xv days of July.

14. Godfrey, monk of St. Pantaleon at Cologne: a Benedictine of the time of the Emperor Frederick II. [Godefridi Monachi S. Pantaleonis apud Coloniam Agrippinam Annales ab a. 1162 ad a. 1237. In: Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores ex biblioth. Marquard. Freher ed. Burcard. Gotthelf Struve. Tom. I. Argentorat. 1717. fol. p. 333-38 1.]

In that same year from all France and Germany boys of diverse ages and ranks, marked with the cross, affirmed that they were commanded by God to proceed to Jerusalem, for the succour of the Holy Land. After the example of whom a multitude of youths and women, marking themselves with the cross, set in order to go with them. To whom also some evil-disposed men joining themselves, nefariously and secretly took from them the things they had brought out, and those which they daily received from the faithful, and went away secretly: one of whom being taken at Cologne ended his life on the Gallows. Many also of them perished in woods and desert places of heat, hunger, and thirst: others, having crossed the Alps, as soon as they entered Italy were spoiled and driven back by the Lombards and returned with disgrace. (The destruction of Milan, 1162, had embittered the hatred of the Lombards to the Germans.)

15. Chronicle of St. Medard's, Soissons. [Ex Chronico S. Medardi Suessionis. Apud Acherium, Tom II. Spicileg. in Fol. pag. 489 (a) Ibidem, p. 720- 721. A.]
 

(Dtae 1209.) Au innumerable multitude of children and boys from different parts, cities, castles, towns, camps, and farms of France, going out without the permission and assent of their parents, said that they had undertaken to cross the sea in quest of the Holy Cross: but they succeeded not at all. For all, in different ways, were ruined, died, or returned. They say indeed and affirm for a certainty, that every ten years before that wonder happened, fishes, frogs, butterflies, birds, proceeded in like manner, according to their kind and their season. At that time so great a multitude of fishes was caught that all marvelled greatly. And certain old and decayed men affirm as a certain thing, that from different parts of France an innumerable multitude of dogs gathered together at the town of Champagne which is called Manshymer. But those dogs having divided into two parties, and fighting bravely and bitterly against one another, nearly all slew one another in the mutual slaughter, and very few returned.

16. Thom Cantipratani Bonum universale de Apibus L. II. c. 2. Edition, without date and place, of the 15th century.

17. Roger Bacon. [Fratris Rogeri Bacon ordinis Minorum Opus majus ad Clementem IV. Pont. Max. primum a Samuele Tebb, M. D. Londini editum 1733. Nunc vero diligenter recusum. Accedit prologus galeatus in reliqua opera ejusdem Autoris. Venetiis 1750. Ap. Franc. Pitteri. Fol. p. 189.)

I write these things not only for prudent consideration, but also because of the perils which occur and will occur to Christians and the Church of God through infidels, and especially Antichrist, because he will use the power of wisdom, and turn all things to evil. And by exhibiting words and deeds of this kind (? stellificanda verba, &c.), and ordering them with great desire of mischief, with most sure aim, and eager confidence, he will allure to misery not only single persons, but cities and countries.

Perhaps ye have seen or heard for certain, that boys of the realm of France collected together in infinite multitude, after a certain evil man, so that they could not be restrained either by their fathers or mothers or friends, and were put in ships and sold to the Saracens, and this not LXIV years ago. In like manner in our times a master shepherd stirred up all Almayne and France, and there ran alter him a multitude of people, and he had favour with all the common and lay people, in contempt of the clergy and to the confusion of the Church. And he said to the Lady Blanche, that he would go to her son beyond the sea, with such words deceiving that most prudent woman. They that were wise did not doubt but they were messengers of the Tartars or Saracens, and had some contrivance whereby they fascinated the common people. And I saw with my own eyes one that bore something openly in his hands, as it were a sacred thing, as one carries the relics, and he went bare footed, and there was about him a multitude of armed men, but so scattered in the fields that he could be seen of all who met him with that which he carried in his hand with great ostentation.

18. Martin Crusius, Historian, and Professor of Greek and Latin at Tübingen. [Martin. Crusius, annales Suevici, sive Chronica rerum gestarum antiquiseim et inclytae Suevicae gentis. Francofurti 1595. Fol. L.VII. Pais III. p. 405.]

A. 1458. At Hall of the Suabians, on the Thursday after Pentecost, more than a hundred boys, against the will of their parents, made a pilgrimage to Saint Michael. But the senate assigned them an ass and a guide, lest any evil befal them.

Aventinus writes to M. Joan. Herold that the pilgrimage of boys, suddenly stirred up, was made to S. Michaels in Normandy of France: and they could not be kept back by their mothers. Otherwise they immediately died. Afterwards a great pestilence followed-Wonderful fanaticism.

19. Chronicle of the Monastery of Elwangen. [Chronicon Elwangensis Monasterii excerptum perpraedictum D. Matth. Mareschalcum ab anno 1065 usque ad a. 1477. p. 453. Germanicarum rerum Scriptores aliquot insignes hactenus incogniti. Tomus unus, nunc primum editus. Ex bibliotheca Marquardi Freheri. Francofurti 1624. Pol. p. 463.]

1459. - - A number of Boys went on pilgrimage to St Michael's situated in the middle of the Sea, when the sea divided itself each day, the boys went through with their feet dry.

20. John Lindner, Monk at Pirna. [Excerpta Saxonica, Misnica et Thuringiaca ex Monachi Pirnensis, seu, vero nomine, Joannis Lindneri sive Tillani onomastico autographo quod extat in Bibliotheca Senatoria Lipsiensi. Col. 1447. Jo. Burchard Menekenius Scriptores rerum Germanicaxum, praecipue Saxonicarum. Tom. II. Lips. 1728. Pol.]

And (MCCXXXVII) more than 1000 children assembled at Erfort, went to Arnstadt, danced, etc. there, the parents got cars, sledges and carts, they let themselves be fetched home, "no one could find out the cause."

21. Civitatis Erfurtensis Historia Critica et diplomatica, oder vollständige Alte, Mittel-und Neue Historie von Erfurth etc. Ausgefertigt von Joh. Heinr. v. Falkenstein. Erfurt 1739. 4to. Buch II. Cap. § 15. s. 84.


CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY.

POLITICAL EVENTS.
 


1461-1483. Louis XI.
1485-1509. Henry VII.
1493-1519. Maximilian 1. Mercenary troops are introduced.
1483-1498. Charles VIII
1483-1485. Richard III.
1483, October. First abortive attempt of the Earl of Richmond (who had fled to France in 1471) against Richard III. The Duke of Buckingham executed.
1485. Richmond obtains support from Charles VIII.
1485, 25th July. Richmond's departure from Havre.
1485, 1st August. Landing at Milford Haven.
1485. From the 1st to the 22nd of August, march from Milford Haven to Lichfield and Bosworth.
1485. 22nd August. The battle of Bosworth. Richard III. falls. The Earl of Richmond become a king, under the name of Henry VII.
1485. 28th August. Henry's entry into London.
1485. 30th October. Henry's coronation.
1481-1492. The wars of Ferdinand the Catholic, against the Saracens.
1495. Useless war for the succession of Charles VIII. against Alfonso II. (who died in 1495), and Ferdinand II. of Naples. The conquest of the kingdom was again immediately relinquished.








1485-1509. Henry VII.
1501. His eldest son, Arthur, marries Catherine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic.
1502. Prince Arthur dies. Prince Henry (VIII.), second son of Henry VII., is affianced to
Catherine of Arragon.
The internal condition of England is altered by Henry VII. The towns begin to rise in importance, and the sciences to become diffused. A rigorous and unjust financial system.

1498-1515 Louis XII.

1501. conquers Naples in conjunction with the Spaniards, and is by them
1504. expelled thence. He establishes his power in Upper Italy.
1511. Pope Julius II. (1503-1513) forms the sacred league against France, into which enters likewise in 1512, Henry VIII. The French lose their power in Italy.
1504. Isabella of Castile dies. Philip I. of Austria, her daughter Johanna's husband, succeeds her, his son, Charles V., having been born in 1500.

1506. Philip I. dies.
1516. Ferdinand the Catholic dies. 





1509-1547. Henry VIII.
1515-1547. Francis I. immediately attacks Milan again, and conquers
1515. the Swiss, in the battle of Marignano. Keeps possession of Milan and establishes the French dominion in Italy until the year 1522.
1516. Cardinal Wolsey changes the policy of England in favour of Francis I.,
1520. then of Charles V.
1513-1522. Leo X., against France. Promotes, by a new bull of indulgences, the outbreak of the Reformation.
1517. 31st of October, Luther commences the Reformation.
1519. 12th January, the Emperor Maximilian I. dies.
1519.1556. Charles V.
1521. Imperial diet at Worms.
1517. May: Insurrections of the operatives in London.
1517. In the autumn and winter, Henry VIII. frequently changes the residence of his Court

in consequence of the Sweating Sickness and the Plague.
1518. 11th February, Queen Mary is born.
1518. The College of Physicians in London is founded by Linacre.
1521. Henry VIII. opposes Luther, and obtains the title of "Defender of the Faith." (Thomas More.)  


 


1524. October, Francis I. passes Mont Cenis, and is
1525. beaten at Pavia and captured.
1526, 14th January. Peace of Madrid.
1526. Clement VII. (1523-1534) becomes the head of the Holy League against the Emperor.
1527. 6th May. Rome is vanquished ,by the imperial army and sacked.
1528. A French army, under Lautrec, conquers the greatest part of Italy, and commences
1528. 1st May, the siege of Naples. Lautrec dies in August.
1528. 29th August, the siege of Naples is raised. The remains of the French army are made prisoners.
1528. Charles V. challenges Francis I. to single combat.
1529. 5th August, Francis I. concludes the unfavourable peace of. Cambray. Termination of the French dominion in Italy. The Reformation in England is retarded.
1527. Scruples of Henry VIII. respecting his marriage with Catherine of Arragon. Various negociations on the subject in the following years. Cardinal Wolsey falls into disgrace. Thomas More becomes chancellor.
1528. Henry' VIII. retires to Tytynhangar in consequence of the Sweating Sickness.
1532. Separation of the king from Catherine. Mary is excluded from the government.
1533. January. Anna Boleyn becomes queen. The Reformation is introduced.
1535. Thomas More and Fisher are executed.
1536. Anna Boleyn is executed. Jane Seymour becomes queen. Dies 1537.
1537. Anne of Cleves becomes queen. Separation after six months.
1541. Catherine Howard, queen, and executed one year and six months afterwards.
1544. Catherine, queen.
1547. 13th December, Henry VIII. dies.
1521. Plots of the Iconoclasts in Zwickau and Wittenberg.
1523-1525. Peasant war. On the 15th May, battle of Frankenhausen.
1529. Imperial Diet at Spires.
1529. 22nd September - 16th October, the Turks before Vienna.
1529. 2nd October, assemblage of the Reformers in Marburg.
1530. 25th June, surrender of the Augsburg confession. Severe decrees against the Protestants.
1531. League of the Protestant princes at Schmalkalden. Continued danger from the Turks

1532. Imperial Diet at Nuremberg. The Protestants obtain security.
1533-1535. Excesses of the Anabaptists at Munster. 1536. The Schmalkaldic league is strengthened.
1538. The Catholic States establish the sacred league at Nuremberg.
1540. Paul III. (1534.1550) confirms the order of the Jesuits, founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola.
1519-1541. Conquest of Mexico, Peru, Chili, &c.












1542. Maurice Duke of Saxony renounces the league of Schmalkalden.
1542. The imperial army which opposes the Turks in Hungary, under Joachim II. of Brandenburg, is destroyed by sickness.
1546. The 18th February, Luther dies.
1546. Charles V. takes the field against the Protestants, proclaims the Elector, John Frederick, and Landgrave Philip of Hesse, outlaws. Gains

1547. 24th April, the battle of Muhlberg. Raises

1548. Duke Maurice to the electorate of Saxony, and prescribes the interim, which is not accepted by Magdeburg.

1551. Magdeburg declared to bee under the imperial ban, and besieged in vain by the Saxons.

1552. Henry II. of France (1547-1559), in alliance with the Protestant princes, takes Metz, Toul, and Verdun.
1552. The treaty of Passau secures to the Protestants equal rights with the Catholics.
1547-1553. Edward VI. nine years old. The Duke of Somerset governs the kingdom as Protector. The Reformation is favoured, and makes progress.
1553. Mary persecutes the Protestants, and in 1558 loses Calais.
1556. Charles V. abdicates, and dies on the 11th of September, 1558, in Spain.

FIRST VISITATIONS OF THE SWEATING SICKNESS

 

1478-1482. Swarms of locusts in the south of Europe.
1480-1485. Wet years.
1483. Overflow of the Severn (the great water of the Duke of Buckingham).
1480 and 1481. Famine in Germany and France.
1477-1486. Glandular plague in Italy.
1480. 1481. Encephalitis in Germany.
1482. Febrile cerebritis in Franco, and epidemic pleuritis in Italy.
1483. Glandular plague in Spain.
1484 and 1485. Malignant fever in. Germany and Switzerland. Plague in Spain.
1485. In the beginning of August: eruption of the English Sweeting Sickness, probably amongst Richmond's mercenary troops. It spread from west to east, and then in a contrary direction.

1485. The end of August,in Oxford.
1485. 21st September till the early part of

October, in London.

1485. The middle of September, in Croyland.
1486, 1st January. Termination of the first epidemic Sweating Sickness.
1486. Epidemic scurvy in Germany. Plague in Spain.

1488-1490. Plague in Spain.
1490. First eruption of petechial fever in Granada, in the army of Ferdinand the Catholic.
1495. Eruption of the syphilitic pestilence at Naples, among the mercenary army of Charles VIII.
1499. Great plague in London.


SECOND VISITATION


1500-1503. Mould-spots (signacula) in Germany and France.
1500. Comet.
1500. Mortality among cattle in Germany.
1502. Very extensive destruction of cultivation in Germany by blights of caterpillars.
1503. Glandular plague, and destructive epidemics in Germany and France.
1504. Plague in Spain.
1504 and 1505. Encephalitis, putrid fever, and malignant pneumonia in Germany.
1505. First epidemic petechial fever in Italy. The morbid activity of the organism showed a 1505. Plague in Portugal.

1505. First epidemic petechial fever in Italy. The morbid activity of the organism showed a decided determination towards the skin during all this period.
1505. Moist summer. Lamentable moral state of England.
1506. The summer: the Sweating Sickness breaks out in London, and continues to a moderate extent, being confined to England, until the autumn. This second visitation is the mildest of all, and the old English method of
treatment proves effectual everywhere.

1506-1508. Pestilential epidemics in Spain.

1508. Swarms of locusts in Spain.


THIRD VISITATION

 

1515. Pestilential epidemics in Spain.
1516. Comet.
1517. Unproductive, but not moist summer.
1510. Great influenza (Coqueluche) throughout France, and probably to a still further ex- tent. Plague in the north of Europe.
1517. In the early months epidemic trachaeitis and oesophagitis (diphtheritis) in Holland, lasting only eleven days. This epidemic extends towards the south, and appears in the same summer at Bâsle.
1517. On the 16th June, earthquake in Swabia (and Spain).
1517. Encephalitis and other inflammatory fevers in Germany.
1517. In July, outbreak in London of the third visitation of epidemic sweating sickness; it spreads with great malignity all over England, and among the English at Calais; in the sixth week it attains its greatest violence, and terminates in December. Aminonius, of Lucca, and many distinguished and learned persons in Oxford and Cambridge, are carried of by it.
1517. In December, immediately after the Sweating Sickness, a plague occurs in England, and lasts all the winter.

1517. Smallpox breaks out in Hispaniola.


FOURTH VISITATION

 

1524. Great plague at Milan.
1527. Inundations in Upper Italy.
1527. 11th August, a comet.
1527. Plague in the imperial army in Italy, after the sacking of Rome; and in Wittemberg.
1528-1534. Years of famine, with a prevalence of moisture and heat.
1528. Repeated inundations. Continual south winds and summer fogs in Italy. Second great epidemic petechial fever there.
1528. Destruction of the French army before Naples by a pestilential Spotted Fever.
1528. Cold spring and moist summer in France.
1528-1532. Warm winters, moist summers. Repeated failures of harvest, and great famines in that country.
1528. The Trousse-galant carries off a fourth part of the inhabitants of France in this and the following years.
1528. Wet and mild winter. Moist summer with fogs. Failure in crops, and famine in England.
1528. At the end of .May: outbreak in London. of the Fourth epidemic Sweating Sickness. It spreads with great malignity, and with much disturbance of social life, all over England; carries of many distinquished persons, and terminates in the winter. This year it remains confined to England, and does not return
in the following year.
1528. Continual south-east winds. Great drought. Swarms of locusts and fiery meteors in the north of Germany.
1529. Earthquake in Upper Italy. Sanguineous rain at Cremona. A comet in July and August.
1529. Mild winter in Germany. The spring begins in February. Great moisture throughout the summer. General dearth in March. Disease among the porpoises in the Baltic. Unwholesomeness of the river fish in the north of Germany. Disease among birds. Languor resembling syncope in Pomerania. Frequent suicides in the March. In the middle of June a flood of rain lasting four days (torrent of St. Vitus) in the south of Germany. On the 10th of August, a universal tempest. 24th of August, and the following days, great heat.
1529. 25th July, outbreak of the epidemic Sweating Sickness in Hamburgh. Termination on the 5th August. On the 29th July in Lübeck. On the 14th August in Zwickau. About the 1st

September the English Sweating Sickness appears to spread universally all over Germany. On the 31st August in Stettin; termination on the 8st September. On the 1st September in Dantzic; termination on the 6th September. On the 24th August in Strasburg. On the 5th, 6th, and 7th September in Cologne, Augsburq, and .Francfort on the Maine. About the 20th September in Vienna and among the besieging Turks. On the 27th September in Amsterdam. Termination en the 1th October in Antwerp and the rest of the Netherlands; simultaneously, at the end of September, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. At the commencement of November a universal cessation of the epidemic Sweating Sickness.
1530. In October, overflow of the Tiber. Bursting of the dykes and sudden inundations in Holland, which were repeated in 1532.
1531. 1th of August to 3rd September, the comet of Halley.
1532. From 2nd October to 8th November, and
1533. From the middle of June to August, comets.
1534. Termination of the years of scarcity, during which malignant fevers prevailed in circumscribed localities throughout Europe.


FIFTH VISITATION

 

1538. Epidemic dysentery in France.

1540. The hot summer. The forests take fire spontaneously.

1541. Plague in Constantinople.

1542 Swarms of locusts in the south of Europe, and plague in Hungary during the war of the Turks in that kingdom.

1543. Plague and petechial fever in Germany. Metz.

1545 and 1546. Trousse-galant in France, of which 10,000 English die at Boulogne.

1546. Plague in the Netherlands and France.
1547. Petechial fever in the imperial army.
1547-1551. Mould spots and red water in the north of Germany.
1549. Caterpillars destroy the herbage, and a mortality occurs among cattle in Germany. The 21st of September an aurora borealis.
1549 and 1550. Malignant fever (petechial fever?) in the north of Germany.
1551. Dry and cold spring; hot and wet summer. Inundations, earthquakes, meteors, mock suns, great tempests, summer fogs.
1551. Malignant fever in Swabia: plague in Spain. Influenza.
1551. In the spring, stinking mists on the banks of the Severn.
1551. On the 15th of April outbreak of the fifth epidemic Sweating Fever in Shrewsbury on the Severn. It gradually spreads with stinking mists all over England, and on the 9th of July reaches London. The mortality is very considerable. Foreigners are unaffected, but

Englishmen in foreign countries sicken with the English Sweating Sickness. The epidemic terminates the 30th of September.
1552 and 1553. Malignant fever in Germany and Switzerland.


CATALOGUE OF WORKS

REFERRED TO BY THE AUTHOR.

Adelung (Wolffgang Heinrich) Kurtze historische Beschreibung der uralten u. s. w. Stadt Hamburg. Hamburg, 1696, 4to.
Agricolae (Georgii) De peste Libri tres. Basileae, 1554, 8vo.

Aikin (John) Biographical Memoirs of Medicine in Great Britain, from the revival of literature to the time of Harvey. London, 1780, 8vo.
Allionii (Caroli) Tractatio de miliarium origine, progressu, natura et curatione. August Taurinorum, 1758, 8vo.
Angelus (Andreas, Struthiomontanus) Annales Marchiae Brandenburgicae, das ist: Ordentliches Verzeichniss und Beschreibung der fürnemsten und gedenckwürdigsten Märckischen Jahrgeschichten u. s. w. Franckfurt a. O. 1598, fol.
Annales Berolino Marchici, ab anno 965 ad annum 1740. Deutsche Handschrift. Berliner Königl. Bibl. MS. boruss. fol. 29.
Antwerpsch Chronykje, sedert den jare 1500 tot het jaar 1574, door F. G. V. Te Leyden, 1743, 4to.
Aretaei Cappadocis Aetiologica, Simeiotica et Therapeutica morborum acutorum et diuturnorum, etc. Ed. Georg. Henisch. Augustae Vindelicorum, 1603, fol.
Astruc (Johann.) De morbis venereis Libri novem. 2 Tomi. Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1740, 4to.
Autenrieth (Hermann Friedrich) Ueber das Gift der Fische, mit vergleichender Berücksichtigung des Giftes von Muscheln, Käse, Gehirn, Fleisch, Fett und Würsten, so wie der sogenannten mechanischen Gifte. Tübingen, 1833, 8vo.
Baccii (Andreae) De Thermis Libri VII. Patavii, 1711, 4to.
Bacon, see Verulam.
Baker (Sir Richard) A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the time of the Romans' Government unto the death of King James. London, 1665, fol.
Balaei (Joannis, Sudovolcae) Illustrium maioris Britanniae scriptorum, hoc est Angliae, Cambriae et Scotiae Summarium, ad annum d. 1548. Londini, 1548, 4to.
Bayer (Wencesslaus-von Elbogen, genannt Cubito) Richtiger rathschlag und bericht der ytzt regierenden Pestilentz, so man den Engelischen Schweyss nennet. Leyptzigk, d. 4. September, 1829, 8vo. (Im Besitz des Verf.)
Bell (George Hamilton) A treatise on the diseases of the liver, and on bilious complaints, etc. Edinburgh and London, 1833, 8vo.
Bonn (M. Hermann) Lübecksche Chronica. s. 1. 1634, 8vo.
Brown (Robert) Vermischte botanische Schriften. Ins Deutsche übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen von C. G. Nees von Esenbeek. Schmalkalden, 1825, 2 Bde. 8vo.
Burserii de Kanilfeld (Joann. Baptist.) Institutionum medicinae practicae, quas auditoribus suis praelegebat, Voll. IV. Recudi cur. J. F. C. Hecker. Lipsi, 1826, 8vo.
Caelii Aureliani Siccensis, De morbis acutis et chronicia Libri VIII. Ed. Jo. Conrad. Amman. Amstelaedami, 1755, 4to.
Caii (Johannis, Britanni) De Ephemera Britannica Liber Recudi cur. J. F. C. Hecker. Berolini, 1833, l2mo.
Joannis Caii Britanni, De canibus Britannicis Liber unus; De rariorum animalium et stirpium historia Liber unus; De libris propriis Liber unus; De pronunciatione Graece et Latinae linguae, cum scriptione nova, Libellus. Ad optimorum exemplarium fidem recogniti a S. Jebb, M.D. Londini, 1729, 8vo.
Caius (John) A Boke or Counseill against the Diseaze commonly called the Sweate or Sweatyng Sicknesse. Imprinted at London, A. D. 1552, l2mo. (Ist in Deutschland nicht vorhanden. Einen Abdruck des grössten Theiles dieser merkwürdigen Schrift hat Babington in seiner Englischen Uebersetzung vom "schwarzen Tode" des Verf. geliefert.) See Appendix.
Campo (Antonio) Cremona, fedelissima citta et nobilissima colonia de Romani, rappresentata in disegno col suo contato et illustrata d'una breve historia, etc. Milano, 1645, 4to.
Auli Cornelii Celsi, Medicinae Libri octo. Ex recensione Leonardi Targae, Patavii, 1769, 4to.
Du Chesne (André) Histoire générale d'Angleterre d'Ecosse et d'Irlande. Paris, 1614, fol.
Kurzgefasste Hamburgische Chronica, u. s. w. Hamburg, 1725, 8vo.
Chronici chronicarum politici Libri duo. Francoforti, 1614, 8vo.
Chronik von Erfurt, bis 1574. Handschrift, 4to. Ohne Seitenzahlen. Durch die Güte des Herrn Regierungs-und Medicinalraths Dr. Fischer in Erfurt im Besitz des Verfassers.
Mémoires de Messire Philippe de Comines, oû l'on trouve l'histoire des Rois de Franco Louis XL et Charles VIII. 4 Volumes. Paris, 1747, 4to.
Cordus (Euricius) Eyn Regiment, wie man sich vor der newen Plage, der Englisch schweiss genannt, bewaren, und so man damit ergriffen wird, darinn halten soll. Marpurg, 1529, 4to. Die zweite Auflage ist bald nach der ersten erschienen, und dieser in dem Exemplar der Königl. Bibl. zu Berlin angebunden.
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