Even after hundreds of years, the cause of this strange disease has never been fully understood, making it one of the greatest mysteries in the history of world medicine.
A haunting memory spanning over 60 years.
In 1485, after King Henry VIII officially ascended the throne as Emperor of England, he immediately faced a major challenge due to the appearance of a mysterious and deadly disease. According to this disease, sufferers would suddenly sweat profusely all over their bodies and die within hours.
Shortly after ascending the throne, King Henry VIII faced a terrible disease that was ravaging the land.
Initially, King Henry mistook it for a form of plague. Therefore, he ordered medicine to be distributed to the people. However, upon examining and comparing the symptoms, the doctors realized that the disease plaguing the population had nothing to do with the plague .
According to surviving documents, victims of this strange illness typically begin with a vague feeling of fear, followed by chills, dizziness, and headaches. Soon after, excruciating pain appears, concentrated in areas such as the neck, shoulders, arms, and legs, leaving the patient utterly exhausted.
The chills continued, lasting from about half an hour to three hours. Finally, the patient’s body suddenly developed a high fever throughout the body. They sweated profusely, along with other symptoms such as headache, delirium, and rapid heartbeat.
Excessive and rapid sweating causes patients to be constantly thirsty, but no matter how much water they drink, the sweat continues to pour out, leading to rapid exhaustion, coma, and death.
According to the records of the British Royal Physicians at the time, the lucky few who survived suffered severe mental damage. In particular, their immune systems were completely destroyed, causing these individuals to eventually die within a few years from common illnesses.
England wasn’t the only place to suffer this devastating disease. From London, the mysterious illness gradually spread throughout Europe.
While Europe’s leading physicians were baffled, unable to find the cause or cure of the disease, it kept appearing and disappearing. First appearing in 1485 and then vanishing without a trace in 1551, it ravaged the continent for over 60 years, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of people.
A mystery for five centuries.
The disease, with its strange symptoms, has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Strangely, this unusual disease only affects adults and never children . The youngest recorded case was an 18-year-old man.
Over 500 years have passed, and based on surviving medical records, modern medicine has found no connection between this mysterious disease and any other known illnesses such as pneumonia, dengue fever, or cholera…
Initially, when the epidemic first broke out, suspicion focused on King Henry VIII’s army, who were believed to have carried pathogens from the polluted battlefield environment. However, many people who had no contact with these individuals still fell ill, proving that poor hygiene was not the cause of the pandemic.
Furthermore, other factors such as ticks, lice, and mosquitoes, which carry diseases from the natural environment to humans, are gradually being ruled out due to a lack of convincing evidence.
Symptoms and death are inevitable.
It is considered a mysterious disease because even medieval doctors could not identify the pathogen . Philosopher Francis Bacon, who wrote the biography of King Henry VII, called this king a “ruler in pain” because he could not control the epidemic, simply because he did not understand where it came from or what caused it.
Later, it was hypothesized that outbreaks of “British Sweating” coincided with the beginning of a cooling period for Indonesian volcanoes. There was also the idea that the disease broke out after floods and heavy rains, when rodent populations increased significantly, spreading the disease. Modern science considers “British Sweating” to be an infectious disease caused by Hantavirus.
The drawing illustrates a person suffering from excessive sweating.
British sweating sickness has a rapid onset and no warning signs, often manifesting at night or in the early morning. The first symptoms are chills and shivering, followed by high fever and weakness. Patients typically experience profuse sweating and a rash.
The chills phase can last from half an hour to three hours, followed by a period of intense body heat and sweating. The sweating is profuse and of no apparent cause. The patient experiences a feeling of heat, headache, delirium, rapid pulse, and intense thirst.
In the final stage, patients are exhausted and generally debilitated, often feeling drowsy. The disease progresses very rapidly, sometimes causing death within hours.
Mortality rates vary across documents, but most record between 30% and 50%. Some other medical texts indicate a mortality risk of as high as 80-90%. This difference is due to the level of expertise of doctors at that time.
According to Dr. Thomas Le Forestier, the incubation period for British sweating disease ranges from one to 29 days, sometimes up to 44 days.
Unraveling the mystery
To unravel the mystery of the disease, in 2002, scientists exhumed the body of King Arthur from Worcester Cathedral. However, they were unable to find any clues.
Some speculate that the disease spread due to changes in British society after the Wars of the Roses. The cooler climate, the country’s prosperity, and the expansion of construction created favorable conditions for rats to thrive.
“At that time, things were changing. People started clearing forests on a massive scale. My guess is that a virus in the forest spread to humans,” said Yosi Rimmer, a medical historian at Maccabi Health Services in Haifa, Israel.
The disease is sweeping through the upper class in England.
Some scientists suggest that the symptoms of British 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 the two diseases are the same. Many believe British sweating is anthrax or tuberculosis.
The sweating disorder in England suddenly disappeared in 1551, and by 1718 , a similar condition called Picardy’s sweating broke out in France, followed by limited, sporadic outbreaks until 1861.
In 2014, researchers at Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, argued that Hantavirus was the culprit, spread by bats and rodents, particularly rats. This is a gram-negative RNA virus belonging to the Bunyaviridae family. Humans can become infected through feces, saliva, or contact with rodents.
Thus, this devastating pandemic has always been a target of scientific research throughout history. However, today, all that remains are records and reports; there are no actual samples, so modern analytical techniques are of no help.
And to this day, it remains one of the unsolved mysteries in the history of human medicine.
