4. The sweating sickness pandemic in the British Isles and Continental Europe
Beginning about 1485, and continuing for about 66 years, a strange disease swept England before leapfrogging to the continent. The infectious disease killed suddenly, usually within a few hours of initial symptoms. Medical personnel couldn’t identify it at the time, and have not identified it with certainty since. It was described by a physician in Shrewsbury, England, in 1552. The symptoms began with anxiety, followed by a cold stage, then a hot stage. The cold stage included chills, tremors, and severe headaches, along with pain in the limbs. The hot stage included heavy sweating, fever, delirium, and death. It did not always kill, and those surviving an attack were not immunized from subsequent bouts with the disease.
Historians and medical professionals have proposed several possibilities in attempts to identify the disease, which vanished as mysteriously as it appeared. Anthrax was considered a possibility. So was a form of hantavirus. Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, France, the Germanic lands, and other isolated pockets of settlements all suffered from the disease, which eventually killed an estimated 100,000, and possibly many more. By 1551, the disease had run its course. Isolated outbreaks of similar symptoms occurred well into the 17th century, but the sweating sickness pandemic was considered over in Europe by the end of 1552.