History and Geography

The sweating sickness, or sudor anglicus, is one of the great puzzles of historical epidemiology because no modern disease corresponds very well to its principal epidemiological and clinical features. Thus it is a topic that has generated much speculation and debate in the understanding of what caused the five English epidemics attributed to the “Sweat.”

The first description was written in 1486, which indicated that the earliest epidemic occurred (northern England) during June of 1485, where strictly contemporary accounts use the words “plague” and “pestilence” to describe the local mortality crisis (Wylie and Collier 1981). However, Charles Creighton (1891), whom most authors follow, claims that the initial outbreak began later, in London, on September 19, 1485, brought back with Henry VII’s mercenaries from France and Flanders.

Once in London the epidemic displayed some of its most characteristic and consistent features: higher mortality among men than women, peaking during middle adulthood among the economically advantaged, and a sudden, acute fever accompanied by profuse sweating. Its victims generally lapsed into coma and died within 24 to 48 hours. Similar outbreaks have been identified: in 1508, 1517, 1528, and 1551. Oddly, the disease favored Englishmen at home and abroad. In the British Isles, Scots, Welsh, and Irish were spared.

The “Sweat” had no important demographic repercussions, as the numbers affected were always small in comparison to the poxes and plagues of this period. Nonetheless, each recurrence of the disease produced widespread fear (Gottfried 1977; Slack 1979). In 1528-9, the Sweat uncharacteristically extended to Calais and to many German regions, but was clearly associated with severe famine, as well as an epidemic of typhus (petechial fever) and plague.