Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

SWEATING SICKNESS IN 1491.

From a scarce work, written by sir John Ware, the Irish historian.

About the latter end of December, after the appearance of a blazing star, which shone for some days, a certain grievous and pestilential sickness, commonly called the English Sweat (because it came from England into Ireland) began first to afflict this nation (Ireland), which disease some of the physicians imagined to proceed from a malignity in the air, bred and caused by the open unhealthy mutations of this air. It will not be amiss, having now spoken of this sickness, and how it came here, to bring in the relations of Polydore Virgil, with its signs and the cure thereof, being a thing to be admired at.

In the first year of Henry the Seventh, at which time the sickness first molested England, the same year a new kind of disease overspread through the whole kingdom. A sad contagion it was, which no former age as appears knew; for a sudden deadly sweat seized on the body, and with it, a pain on the head, the stomach being troubled with a vehement burning heat. If they lay in their beds, they flung off the coverlets; if clad, they put off their clothes: others being thirsty, drank cold drink; and lastly, others enduring the heat and smell (for the sweat smelt so grievous) by keeping on the clothes, provoked it so, that out of all the number of sick folks, scarce the hundredth person did recover; but in the space of twenty-four hours, the force of the disease continuing so long, the sweat going away, they were preserved, notwithstanding it did not free them from it, but that they might have it again, whereof many perished.
But at last a remedy was found out or so great an evil, for they who sweated a first time, when they had a second fit, they observed those things which availed in the first cure, and using the same for remedies, they always added something that was profitable to the cure; also those very same folks, when they fell in the like fit again, they, by their former observations, easily avoided the violence thereof; which at last was so common, that after a great loss of people, a very speedy remedy was found out, which was this:
If any fell sick by day, having his clothes on, he immediately went to bed; but if it took him in bed by night, then he was to lie still; and not rise for the space of 24 hours, and in the mean time to load himself so with coverlets, yet not so as to provoke sweat, but what should gently proceed of itself, and withal to take no food, if he could bear so long, or to drink any more warm drink than might sparingly be sufficient to quench his thirst; during the cure he was chiefly to have a care not to put his hands or his feet out of the bed to cool them, which if he did, was mortal. This remedy was found out for this disease, which overspread England so much at that time, and did often after grievously afflict them. Thus far Polydore Virgil writes touching this sickness.