What was sweating sickness?
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Sweating Sickness was a serious illness which appeared at different intervals during Tudor times and which claimed many lives. This illness, known also as the "English Sweate" affected England first, and then spread into Europe, with a series of epidemics between 1485 and 1551. It is not known exactly what caused it or even what it was because it disappeared entirely after 1578.
Symptoms of sweating sickness included "a sense of apprehension", shivers, dizziness, headaches, pain in the arms, legs, shoulders and neck, and fatigue or exhaustion. The illness had different stages - the cold shivery stage followed by the hot sweating stage. It could kill in hours.
Possible causes - There are various theories as to what caused the sweating sickness including poor hygiene, "relaspsing fever" ( a disease spread by lice and ticks) and hantavirus. None of these theories really relate 100% to sweating sickness though.
Interestingly, sweating sickness seemed to be more virulent among the higher classes. Some believe that it may have been sweating sickness which claimed the life of Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's older brother, and others thought to have suffered from it include Anne Boleyn, William Carey (husband of Mary Boleyn), who died from it, and many members of Henry's court.
Does the sweating sickness still exist today?
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Bruno Thor Reply:
November 15th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
My reading on the subject indicates it does not exist today. As we do not know with certainty what caused it and it not persist after 1578 (that we are aware of), it seems unlikely that it is around today. We have plenty of newer plagues and diseases to worry about today, especially if one is around hospitals frequently.
I have not read everything about this mysterious illness and I could be completely wrong in my response to the question. I asked my doctor if there was a cause found and he replied “no.”
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I don’t know if the sweating sickness is still around.It might, but the name has probably changed.
I really don’t now much on how clean and hygenic upperclass homes were.
Maybe because the home of the average poor person or maybe middle class wasn’t that clean, the people ,the average man and woman might have had some sort of ammunity to the diease.
If I remember from science, when the first vaccine for small pox came out, it was noted that dairy maids and those who seemd to work around cattle didn’t get small pox.They got a milder form called cow pox, and it was from this that the small pox vaccine came about,but don’t hold me to it.
Been a long time since I studied this in school.
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Nicole Reply:
May 23rd, 2012 at 6:30 pm
I remember reading when I was growing up how the North Americans tried to get the English/Europeans to bathe more often because they stunk. So maybe your theory is accurate. Maybe the upper class were more clean/more immune.
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Has anyone asked someone in the medical field of today what their take on this would have been?? I think it was a form of Flu….like many of the heavy duty flu’s that have covered the globe today or maybe even Limes diease which can be caught from animals like deer and spread I believe from one person to another. The only thing that really throws me is like Claire mentioned, some and probably most died within hours of acquiring the bug…?
That is one harsh strong illness and Anne should have thanked her lucky stars that she did not become a victim. Am I correct that Cardinal Wolsey also acquired this sickness??
Poor Mary Boleyn, she just gets her problems solved and marries William Carey, how perfect for Henry, than a bug kills her husband. Poor woman could not win for loosing!
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Bonnie Reply:
April 18th, 2012 at 7:29 am
Lyme disease is not person-to-person transmissible. Your flu theory is as plausible as any. – From a pediatrician
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Momof3 Reply:
June 7th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
I am a virologist and it is unlikely that it was flu because it never affected infants who are highly susceptible to the flu. I am also highly doubtful it was hantavirus, even though that is a popular theory. Although hantavirus has in some cases spread person to person, it spreads to much less than one person per infected individual. The sweating sickness spread to an estimated 10 people or more. That is much higher than the flu. Another interesting factor was that exercise during and after the period of apprehension helped people to survive. That could work for the flu theory because you recover much faster if you keep active, but that would be the opposite of the case with rapid blood borne diseases.
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A new hypothesis (well, 1997ish–if you can call that new) is that the sweating sickness was actually hantavirus pulmonary syndrome that was found in the American southwest in 1993 and is spread by (surprise!) rodents. Reports indicated that if you survived the first 24 hours then you would be fine, but the illness typically killed within a few hours of the first symptoms.
You can read a brief article on it here: http://discovermagazine.com/1997/jun/thesweatingsickn1161
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no, this was NOT the flu, and it didnt completely resemble any other sicknesses, it hit the healthy the worst, and it appeared and dissapeared so rappidly…
its not around today, and there are scientists who have thought about digging up a duke who died of this disease, but they say this type of genetic material is unstable and may not have survived..
this sickness is a mystery…
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The “sweating sickness” also called the “english sweate” is now believed to be a hanavirus., such as the hanavirus pulmonary syndrome. The symptoms of the two diseases are extremely similar.
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Considering that England had during that time, many moats and ponds of still water, why not from mosquitoes? And what viruses do them bugs carry?
England got it the worst and first.
It also has the most in the way of castles and swamps and bogs
It would affect the nobility because they did basically nothing in physical activity and would affect the farmers the least because they worked continuously not allowing skeeters to land on them and draw blood.
The disease may have disappeared entirely because farming practices changed over the course of time and swamps got filled in.
I caught the h1n1 flu and I did not sweat. I just had trouble breathing and coughed up my liver and other guts. But that was a 9 day virus(with no drugs) and it is gone.
I guess we will always speculate on what it was, since the invention of soap and chlorine that means today is not then.
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it unlikely to be malaria as they would have looked at it as they have compared the sweat to every known illness also the poor would have been affected if it was as mosquito’s like the smell of sweat and the rich used a herb bag that naturally repelled them as I have a mix recipe of it from the 1400, I wonder if it was a type of poisoning as castles were built may have disturbed some natural element and contaminated the castles water supply and the poor only had the river really for water or maybe infected meat or fruit that the rich always had imported in from other countries. it only became apparent when the French arrived in England and didn’t last long after the Tudor dynasty is a bit well odd
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Momof3 Reply:
June 7th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Poisoning does not spread from person to person.
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The hantavirus epidemic in southwestern US correlated with certain natural factors. If I remember, there was an abundance of pinon pinenuts which caused an upswing in the white footed mouse population. The rodents increasingly encroached on human populations. I beieve the virus is spread through disturbed dust from rodent droppings. (A friend of mine got a less severe form of it sweeping up mouse droppings in a shed in the Pacific northwest.) Also plague epidemics were found to occur in drought years. There was something about the gut of the flea becoming blocked so they spit when they bit. I can’t see how fleas could suffer from drought. Didn’t the sweating sickness happen in spring as well as summer?
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Last I knew, the hantavirous made your organs liquify and leak out your body. So I very much doubt it was that!
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Harold Reply:
September 17th, 2012 at 5:47 am
I think you’re thinking of ebola.
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Why hasn’t H1N1 been brought up as a possibility? Swine flu is extremely virulent, is mostly fatal to overactive immune systems (ie: those between the ages of 20 and 35) and happens very fast.
I’m just throwing this out there because someone I worked with died during the epidemic a few years back and I almost died myself. My entire household caught it within 2 days of each other.
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ladylayne Reply:
March 8th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Someone did bring up H1N1. It might be good for people to read what others wrote before they blog.
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All I have to say is, I’m sure it ‘s a IIlness that you don’t ever want to get! Baroness x
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It seems to me that no one here has considered that the cause for this disease is not a virus but in fact the direct hand of God dealing out his righteous judgement against the sinful and the wicked.
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I refuse to believe that if there is a God, he is the vengeful, vindictive God suggested. As it was prevalent amongst the aristocracy, were only the wealthy wicked? Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe God has had a “tangible” presence since the old testament. Please don’t list miracles and whatnot as evidence as they are based on Man’s assessment and faith. If you want to believe in such a malevolent God, this is your right and your choice. I do not find it very charitable or Christian.
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I have done extensive research on diseases of the time periods between the 13th through the 17th centuries and “The Sweat” as they called it has boggled me, and apparently everyone else since it disappeared in the late 1500′s. However I do have a theory and please feel free to give me your feed back.
First; the disease originated in England which everyone knows is a place of many swamps, bogs etc. and a wet climate. Mosquito’s flourish in these environments and in my opinion would be the carrier of this mysterious disease. I say this because the symptoms, however more severe, are very similar to that of malaria, which has claimed it’s share of lives itself. And the fact that the sickness appeared to be seasonal; cases and deaths seemed to start in late spring and end in late fall or around October, back up my theory. This would also account for people believing that it was being spread from person to person when in fact it may have been from being bitten by the same batch of mosquito’s as it appeared to happen to groups of people in the same areas. This theory makes the most sense to me the question is, if the insects remained there which as we all know mosquito’s come back every year; how could it have just disappeared?
Very mysterious indeed, we may never know what this illness was and I hope we never do. If we did that most likely would mean it has returned and that, is a very scary thought!
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i have been following comments on this subject and wondered when someone would bring god into it.It is clear a huge number of people died of this sickness but nowhere near as many as those killed in the name of one god or another.maleria,cancer,typhoid,smallpox,STICK RELIGION ON THE LIST.
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