Did The Sweat Sickness Epidemic Just Disappear?

Have you heard of the sweat sickness? Between 1485 and 1551, England was hit with episodes of this sickness. The sickness was terrible with patients experiencing fatigue, aches, and excessive sweating, which could lead to death within hours. With each episode, hundreds of people died but after 1551, the sickness suddenly disappeared.

A century after the black death killed about one third of the population of Europe, England began to experience the sweating sickness. At this time, medicine was still very crude and people were just learning about a lot of things. So many unethical things that were ethical at the time were done including pulling of hair, teeth, and other parts of the body, not forgetting blood letting.

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The 15th and 16th centuries were not the best time to fall ill because there was a lot of vibe-based medicine. So that time was not the best time to suffer from sweating sickness.

Researchers who looked into the sickness learned that it had a whole lot of names including sudor Anglicus, the sweat, and English Sweat. Researchers think there are five summers between the years when the epidemic struck hard. The sickness was said to spread faster from June to August but at a time one began in April and another ended in December.

Death at the time could be quick probably as a result of dehydration with death ranging from 5% to about 90%. The causes could also be a result of physicians giving things that made it worse like wanting the patient to sweat out the disease by giving them hot drinks, pilling clothes on them to make them warm, and so on, including trying to keep them awake by making them smell vinegar and rosewater, and continually pulling parts of their body to keep them awake.