In the 16th century, half of Europe's population died from the mysterious "English sweat"

In 16th century Europe, a wave of epidemic disease, dubbed "The English sweating fever" or "sweating sickness". She was accompanied by a high mortality rate. The epidemic flared up several times between 1485 and 1551-m-m years.

The first outbreak was recorded in England. When living in Brittany Henry Tudor, the future king of England, landed Wales, sweating sickness, he brought with him. Most of his troops, consisting mainly of French and Breton mercenaries, was infected. At the time of landing the disease was just beginning to emerge. After Henry Tudor was crowned and confirmed in London, sweating sickness spread to the local population, and over the last month from her several thousand people died. Then, the epidemic had subsided to a few years to appear in Ireland.

In 1507-m and 1517-m's disease flared up again and again in different parts of the country - the city of Oxford and Cambridge have lost half of the population. In 1528, the year attack returned to London, where spread all over the country. King Henry VIII was forced to leave the capital and move from place to place in order not to be infected.

After a while, sweating sickness penetrated the continent, hitting the first Hamburg, then Switzerland, then passing the Holy Roman Empire. Later, foci of disease broke out in Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Norway and Sweden. For some reason France and Italy managed to avoid infection.

In every region of the country the disease came to naught for two weeks. It flows quite painful: the patient begins to chills, headache and dizzy, and then there is an ache in the neck, shoulders and limbs. Three hours later came the strongest thirst, fever, and throughout the body acted smelly sweat. Quickens the pulse, heart ached, and the patient began to rave. A characteristic feature of the disease was severe drowsiness - it was believed that if a person falls asleep, you will never wake up. It is surprising that, unlike, for example, bubonic plague patients had no rash or skin ulcers. Once a refresher English sweating fever, the person does not develop immunity and could not catch it again.

On the causes of the disease is not known. Contemporaries put forward hypotheses about the relationship of the disease with certain harmful substances in nature, dirt, lice or ticks bites. Probably, it will remain a mystery - it took too many years to be able to judge fairly, and in our time the emergence of such a disease is almost impossible.

via factroom.ru