Even after hundreds of years, the cause of this peculiar disease has never been clarified, making it one of the greatest mysteries in the history of world medicine.
The Obsession Lasting Over 60 Years
In 1485, after King Henry VIII officially ascended to the throne of England, he immediately faced a significant challenge due to the emergence of a mysterious and deadly illness. Patients would suddenly sweat profusely and die within just a few hours.
Upon ascending the throne, King Henry VIII faced a terrifying disease rampant everywhere.
Initially, King Henry mistook this for a form of the plague. As a result, he ordered medication to be distributed to the populace. However, upon examining and comparing symptoms, physicians realized that the disease causing havoc had nothing to do with the plague.
According to surviving documents, victims of this strange illness often began with vague feelings of fear, followed by chills, dizziness, and headaches. Soon after, excruciating pain would emerge, focusing on areas like the neck, shoulders, and limbs, leaving patients utterly exhausted.
The chills would persist, lasting anywhere from half an hour to about three hours. Finally, the patient’s body would suddenly transition to a high fever. They would sweat profusely, accompanied by other symptoms such as headaches, delirium, and rapid heartbeat.
Excessive sweating and rapid onset made patients perpetually thirsty, but no matter how much water they consumed, the sweating continued unabated, quickly leading to exhaustion, coma, and death.
According to records from Royal Physicians of that time, a few fortunate survivors suffered severe mental damage. Particularly, their immune systems were completely destroyed, causing these individuals to eventually die from common ailments years later.
England was not the only place to suffer from this horrific devastation. From London, the mysterious disease gradually spread throughout Europe.
While top physicians across Europe were stumped and unable to identify the cause or treatment for the disease, it would appear and disappear mysteriously. First emerging in 1485, it suddenly vanished without a trace in 1551, claiming the lives of tens of thousands across the continent over more than 60 years.
A Mystery for Five Centuries
The disease with strange symptoms led to the deaths of tens of thousands.
Strangely, this unusual disease only attacked adults and did not affect children. The youngest recorded case was an 18-year-old young man.
More than 500 years have passed, and through the remaining medical records, modern medicine has found no connection between this mysterious disease and any other known ailments such as pneumonia, dengue fever, or cholera.
Initially, when the outbreak first occurred, the first suspicion fell on King Henry VIII’s army, believed to have brought pathogens from the polluted battlefield environment. However, many who had no contact with these individuals still contracted the disease, proving that unsanitary conditions were not the cause of this pandemic.
Other factors such as ticks, lice, mosquitoes, and other vectors from nature were also gradually ruled out due to a lack of compelling evidence.
Symptoms and Inevitable Death
It is regarded as a mysterious disease because even medieval doctors could not identify the pathogen. Philosopher Francis Bacon, who wrote the biography of King Henry VII, referred to this king as someone who “ruled in pain” because he could not control the epidemic, simply because he did not understand where it came from or what caused it.
Later, there were hypotheses suggesting that outbreaks of “English Sweating” coincided with the beginning of a cooling period of volcanoes in Indonesia. Some also proposed that the disease flared up after floods and heavy rains, leading to a surge in rodent populations, the likely spreaders of the disease. Modern science considers “English Sweating” to be an infectious disease caused by Hantavirus.
Illustration of a person suffering from the sweating disease.
The English Sweating disease onset was rapid and without warning, typically manifesting at night or in the early morning. The initial symptoms were chills and shivering, followed by high fever and body weakness. Patients often experienced sweating and rashes.
The chill phase could last from half an hour to three hours, followed by a phase of intense heat and sweating. The sweating was profuse and unexplained. Patients felt hot, had headaches, delirium, rapid pulse, and intense thirst.
In the final stage, patients became exhausted and generally collapsed, often feeling drowsy. The disease progressed rapidly, sometimes leading to death within a few hours.
Mortality rates varied in different records, but most reported between 30% to 50%. Some other medical texts indicated a mortality risk of up to 80-90%. The reason for this discrepancy was the expertise level of physicians at that time.
According to Dr. Thomas Le Forestier, the incubation period for the English Sweating disease ranged from one to 29 days, sometimes extending to 44 days.
Decoding the Mystery
In an effort to decode the disease, in 2002, scientists excavated the remains of King Arthur at Worcester Cathedral. However, they found no clues.
Some speculate that the disease spread due to changes in English society after the War of the Roses ended. During this time, the cooler climate, the country’s prosperity, and the expansion of construction created conditions for rats to thrive.
“At that time, everything was changing. People began to clear forests on a large scale. In my opinion, a type of virus in the forest spread to humans,” said Yosi Rimmer, a medical historian at Maccabi Health Services in Haifa, Israel.
The disease swept through the upper class in England.
Some scientists believe the symptoms of English Sweating resemble those of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which also spread in waves over two years and then disappeared. However, most experts do not believe these two diseases are one and the same. Many suggest that English Sweating might be anthrax or tuberculosis.
The English Sweating disease suddenly disappeared in 1551, and by 1718, a similar disease known as Picardy Sweating erupted in France, followed by sporadic outbreaks lasting until 1861.
In 2014, researchers at Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels, Belgium argued that Hantavirus was the culprit behind the disease, transmitted by bats and rodents, especially rats. This is a gram-negative RNA virus belonging to the Bunyaviridae family. Humans can contract this virus through feces, saliva, or contact with rodents.
Thus, this horrific pandemic has always been a target of research for scientists throughout various periods. However, today, what remains are only records and reports, lacking any samples for modern analytical techniques to assist.
And to this day, it remains one of the unanswered mysteries in the history of human medicine.
