Here’s a pop quiz for all of you: what disease makes you sweat profusely, run a slight fever, develop body aches and a pounding head and then makes you drop dead within hours of symptom onset? If you answered “I have no idea”, you passed! Because we haven’t a clue either. In this episode, we attempt to tease apart the mysterious sweating sickness, which struck only five times in the 1400s and 1500s in England, leaving in its wake terror, confusion, and a trail of bodies. Although the sweating sickness has not been seen since (or has it?), scientists and scholars continue to investigate this mysterious illness and propose various pathogens as the likely causative agent. Tune in to hear us go through the most popular explanations to see if we can form our own consensus on ‘the sweat’.
| History | Biology |
| Bridson, Eric. “The English sweate’ (Sudor Anglicus) and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.” British Journal of Biomedical Science 58.1 (2001): 1. | Belser-Ehrlich, Sarah, et al. “Human and cattle ergotism since 1900: symptoms, outbreaks, and regulations.” Toxicology and industrial health 29.4 (2013): 307-316. |
| Dyer, Alan. “The English Sweating Sickness of 1551: an Epidemic Anatomized.” Medical History 41.3 (1997): 362-384. | Swartz, M. N. (2001). Recognition and management of anthrax—an update. New England Journal of Medicine, 345(22), 1621-1626. |
| Flood, John L. “‘Safer on the battlefield than in the city’: England, the ‘sweating sickness’, and the continent.” Renaissance Studies 17.2 (2003): 147-176. | Mock, M., & Fouet, A. (2001). Anthrax. Annual Reviews in Microbiology, 55(1), 647-671. |
| Gottfried, Robert S. “Population, plague, and the sweating sickness: demographic movements in late fifteenth-century England.” The Journal of British Studies 17.1 (1977): 12-37. | Caporael, Linnda R. “Ergotism: the satan loosed in Salem?.” Science 192.4234 (1976): 21-26. |
| Heyman et al 2014 Were the english sweating sickness and the picardy sweat cuased by the same hantaviruses | Southern Jr, P. M., & Sanford, J. P. (1969). Relapsing fever: a clinical and microbiological review. Medicine, 48(2), 129-150. |
| Heyman, Paul, Christel Cochez, and Mirsada Hukić. “The English Sweating Sickness: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?.” Acta medica academica 47.1 (2018). | Dworkin, M. S., Schwan, T. G., Anderson, D. E., & Borchardt, S. M. (2008). Tick-borne relapsing fever. Infectious Disease Clinics, 22(3), 449-468. |
| Holmes, Frederick F. “Anne Boleyn, the Sweating Sickness, and the Hantavirus: A Review of an Old Disease with a Modern Interpretation.” Journal of medical biography 6.1 (1998): 43-48. | Vaheri, Antti, et al. “Uncovering the mysteries of hantavirus infections.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 11.8 (2013): 539. |
| Hunter, Paul R. “The English sweating sickness, with particular reference to the 1551 outbreak in Chester.” Reviews of infectious diseases 13.2 (1991): 303-306. | Jonsson, Colleen B.,et al.. “A global perspective on hantavirus ecology, epidemiology, and disease.” Clinical microbiology reviews 23.2 (2010): 412-441. |
| Patrick, Adam. “A consideration of the nature of the English sweating sickness.” Medical history 9.3 (1965): 272-279. | |
| Ridgway, Claire. Sweating Sickness in a Nutshell. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. 2014 | |
| Roberts, R. S. “A consideration of the nature of the English sweating sickness.” Medical history 9.4 (1965): 385-389. | |
| Taviner, Mark, Guy Thwaites, and Vanya Gant. “The English sweating sickness, 1485–1551: a viral pulmonary disease?.” Medical history 42.1 (1998): 96-98. | |
| Thwaites, Guy, Mark Taviner, and Vanya Gant. “The English sweating sickness, 1485 to 1551.” (1997): 580-582. |
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