The disease was
undoubtedly of a miasmatic infectious nature, as was proved by
its rapid spread and the occasional absence of a history of
contagion. It was particularly favored in its development by high
temperature and humidity.
The moral effect of the sweating sickness, similar to that of the
black plague, was again to increase religious fanaticism and
recreate the zeal of persecution.
On the 15th of April, 1551, there was an outbreak of the fifth
and last epidemic of sweating fever in Shrewsbury, on the Severn.
With stinking mists it gradually spread all over England, and on
the 9th of July it reached London. The mortality was very
considerable. The English residents were particularly
susceptible, foreigners being comparatively exempt. The epidemic
terminated about the 30th of September. Since that time the
sweating sickness has never reappeared in England; but in the
beginning of the eighteenth century a disease very similar in
symptoms and course broke out in Picardy, in Northern France.
Toward the end of the century it spread to the South of France,
and since that time has appeared epidemically, 195 distinct
outbreaks having been observed in the course of one hundred and
sixty-nine years, from 1618 to 1787.
Pages:
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804