Sweating Sickness, an extremely fatal epidemic disorder, which ravaged Europe, and especially England, in the 15th and 16th centuries. It derives its name 'because it did most stand in sweating from the beginning until the endyng,' and, 'because it first beganne in Englande, it was named in other countries the Englishe sweat.' It first appeared in London in September 1485, shortly after the entry of Henry VII. with the army which had won the battle of Bosworth Field on August 22. It was a violent inflammatory fever which, after a short rigor, prostrated the powers as with a blow, and, amidst painful oppression at the stomach, headache, and lethargic stupor, suffused the whole body with a fetid perspiration. All this took place in the course of a few hours, and the crisis was always over within the space of a day and night. The internal heat which the patient suffered was intolerable, yet every refrigerant was certain death. 'Scarce one amongst a hundred that sickened did escape with life' (Holinsched)—a statement which, while probably greatly exaggerated, illustrates the dread with which the malady came to be regarded. Two lord mayors of London and four aldermen died within one week; and the disease for the most part seized as its victims robust and vigorous men. It lasted in London from the 21st of September to the end of October, during which short period 'many thousands' died from it. The physicians could do little or nothing to combat the disease, which at length was swept away from England by a violent tempest on New-year's Day. In the summer of 1508 it reappeared in London, and in July 1517 it again broke out in London in a most virulent form, carrying off some of those who were seized by it within four hours. It seems chiefly to have attacked those in the upper classes or in comfortable circumstances. In many towns a third or even a half of the inhabitants are said to have been swept away, again probably an overstatement. On this occasion the epidemic lasted about four months. In May 1528—the year in which the French army before Naples was destroyed by pestilence, and in which the putrid fever known as Trousse-galant decimated the youth in France—the sweating sickness again broke out in the metropolis, spread rapidly over the whole kingdom, 'and fourteen months later brought a scene of horror upon all the nations of northern Europe, scarcely equalled in any other epidemic.' How many lives were lost in this epidemic, which has been called by some historians the great mortality, is unknown; the fact that King Henry VIII. left London, and endeavoured to avoid the disease by continually travelling, shows the general feeling of alarm that existed. We hear of it at Calais in the same year, but nowhere else out of England. In the following summer, having apparently died out in England, it appeared in Germany, first at Hamburg, where it is recorded that 8000 persons died of it, and shortly after at Lübeck, Stettin, Augsburg, Cologne, Strasburg, Hanover, &c. In September it broke out in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, whence it penetrated into Lithuania, Poland, and Livonia; but after three months it had entirely disappeared from all these countries. For three-and-twenty years the sweating sickness totally disappeared, when for the last time (March or April 1551) it burst forth in Shrewsbury, spread rapidly over the whole of England, but disappeared by the end of September. The deaths were so numerous that one historian (Stow) states that the disorder caused a depopulation of the kingdom. The very remarkable observation was made in this year that the sweating sickness uniformly spared foreigners in England, and on the other hand followed the English into foreign countries. The immoderate use of beer amongst the English was considered by many as the principal reason why the sweating sickness was confined to them. Since 1551 the disease has never appeared as it did then and at earlier periods. Its nearest ally is Sudamina (q.v.), or miliary eruption, which has appeared in frequent, but usually limited, epidemics in France, Italy, and Germany (still called there 'the English sweat'), during the 18th and 19th centuries, sometimes, as in the dept. of Vienna in 1887, in so severe and even fatal a form as to suggest the older epidemic in miniature.
See Dr John Caius, A Boke against the Sweatynge Sicknesse (1552); Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages (Syd. Soc. Trans.); Hirsch, Geographical and Historical Pathology (New Syd. Soc. Trans., vol. i. p. 82); and Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain (1891).