Just a quick post to alert you to the publication of my new book, which is a short book on that Tudor mystery disease, sweating sickness.
Here are all the details:
MadeGlobal’s History in a Nutshell Series aims to give readers a good grounding in a historical topic in a concise, easily digestible and accessible way.
Claire Ridgway, author and creator of The Anne Boleyn Files, is known for her easy-going style, but with an emphasis on good history and sound research. In Sweating Sickness in a Nutshell, Claire Ridgway examines what the historical sources say about the five epidemics of the mystery disease which hit England between 1485 and 1551, and considers the symptoms, who it affected, the treatments, theories regarding its cause and why it only affected English people.
Paperback: 50 pages
Also available on Kindle (ASIN B00N4VWI70)
Publisher: MadeGlobal Publishing/CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 30, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 150099622X
ISBN-13: 978-1500996222
Available on Amazon.com, Amazon UK and Barnes & Noble.
That is going to be a really interesting book Claire, will look forward to reading it.
Love the ‘Macabre’ book cover…
I’ll have to put that on the list; this particular disease is very intriguing. It sounds horrifying enough that I wonder why it never reached black plague levels of devastation — unless it was a little too efficient for its own good and burned out before it could do an excessive amount of damage.
Very mysterious as it affected just the English, divine retribution for something maybe? Makes you wonder tho, strange also that children wernt stricken with it either, I think il put that book on my xmas list
This is an excellent overview of the Sweat, which I enjoyed not only for the facts and figures but what contemporaries thought would prevent or treat this frighteningly fast, often fatal scourge of Tudor England. Terrific work, Claire!
For fans of What If fiction, the 3rd book in Clayton Spann’s Lord Protector trilogy plays out a scenario in which the Sweat is bourne from 16th century England to the present, and with the easiness of worldwide travel, quickly becomes a planetary epidemic!
Just ordered your book Sweating Sickness Really looking forward to reading it Claire
The Sweating sickness epidemic of 1529 reached out of England and affected also Scandinavia ,Germany and Russia. In late september it reached Sweden according to a swedish chronicler a generation later Erik Göransson Tegel
Hantavirus is the most likely etiology according to many medical historians but I’m not entirely convinved…Due to scarcity of reports and death records, using epidemiological data may be less helpful in narrowing the exact diagnosis to a certainty… If it were possible to find remains, even the most decayed of resting places could possibly yield DNA characteristics if it were hantavirus…I would love to know the etiology…Poisoning in the food supply is less likely in my opinion, due to the fact that it was always predominantly only found in England ..A grain or rye aflatoxin from a fungus Has been explored but I think the toxin would have been more of an ergotamine poisoning and in extreme concentrations. Think a toxin
Would have been significantly less selective in its victims…The epidemics were noted to cause death in the younger, more healthy males …This is reminiscent of the influenza pandemic of the early 20th century that was more lethal in the healthy because of the immune system’s stronger response in these individuals…