During the Tudor period in England, which extended from the late 15th century until the early 17th century AD, a disease known as "profuse sweating" killed tens of thousands of people in Britain.
The disease that people did not know before, and until now its scientific explanations vary, caused a series of horrific effects to erupt on the victims before killing them, which caused King Henry VIII to “a state of great panic” that made him change the seat of government, in a mysterious period of History of the United Kingdom.
The beginning of the documentation of the strange disease
Early records of this severe disease - also known as Sudor Anglicus - relate to the return of Henry Tudor from France in 1485, to seize the English throne, to become King Henry VII.
The disease may have been brought to him by his army during the sea voyage, although there are no earlier records of it in historical documents.
However, after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry and his forces entered London.
Shortly thereafter, an epidemic of the mysterious disease spread, killing several thousand people before fading away after two months without any known scientific or medical explanation.
Another outbreak of the same disease occurred in Ireland in 1492, but no further repercussions of the epidemic were recorded in England until 1502.
It is believed that profuse sweating was responsible for the death of Arthur, Prince of Wales at the time, paving the way for his younger brother to succeed him, becoming King Henry VIII.
An epidemic of excessive sweating caused a series of horrific effects on victims before it killed them (Shutterstock)
The disease changed the history of Britain
The outbreak of the epidemic increasingly renewed in 1507, 1517 and 1527 in a way that changed the history of Britain as we know it.
The last one began in London, where it was so widespread that Henry VIII moved the court and administration of the kingdom away from the capital.
After the disease spread rapidly across England, the disease suddenly appeared in Hamburg, Germany.
From there it swept across Eastern Europe, with high death rates.
Wherever the epidemic appeared, the symptoms tended to last for only a week or two, and then the wave abruptly subsided without warning.
The disease disappeared completely by the end of 1528, according to the Britannica Encyclopedia.
But... what is English sweating sickness?
Our knowledge of the disease derives primarily from historical accounts that documented the repercussions of the last epidemic in England in 1551.
In a book published the following year, physician John Caius recorded that the illness began suddenly, with a sense of fear and violent chills from the cold.
Symptoms followed by dizziness, headache, extreme fatigue and excruciating pain in the neck, shoulders and extremities.
And sometimes, half an hour after the onset of these symptoms, profuse sweating suddenly began in the victim's body, accompanied by a feeling of heat, headache, delirium, rapid pulse and extreme thirst.
In the final stage of the disease, the patient was experiencing a feeling of heaviness and pressure on the body, and after 24 hours either he breathed his last or began to suddenly recover and feel better.
"This disease is the easiest kind of death in the world," the French ambassador to London, Cardinal de Bellay, wrote in a letter dating back to 1528. "This year alone, about two thousand people in London fell ill."
And the ambassador continued about the huge numbers of victims of the disease, according to the historical “History Extra” website, “12 years ago, when the same thing happened, 10,000 people died in 10 or 12 days, and now it is said that it was not as severe as it is now .. Everyone is worried. Terribly".
The widespread outbreak of the epidemic worried King Henry VIII at the time, so he ordered his entourage to move from London, and move between other central palaces in England for fear of infection.
Modern explanations for the disease
As documented at the time, the epidemic of profuse sweating differed by symptoms from the epidemic infections that preceded it at that point in history, such as the plague.
However, recent medical suggestions for possible causes include a viral infection called hantavirus or even anthrax.
A writer in the 20th century defined the disease as relapsing fever, likely to be spread in the spring and summer by lice and ticks.
This explanation is medically reasonable according to modern medical sciences, and it explains all the symptoms and the high death rates of the disease.
Therefore, modern scientists have suggested that the cause of the disease is a hantavirus infection.
However, none of these nominations fully shares the symptoms described by Caius and historians in Britain and Europe.
English sweating had completely disappeared by the end of 1528, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica (Shutterstock)
A mysterious secret that has not yet been discovered
The Conversation notes that one possibility of this mysterious case may have been an outbreak of a viral disease at the time transmitted by mosquitoes similar to dengue fever.
This is despite the fact that dengue fever itself usually lasts for more than 24 hours and tends to be accompanied by a rash, which is not mentioned in the documentation.
To this day, medical researchers are still searching through ancient documents for new clues that clarify the scene, but we may never know the cause of the excessive sweating disease that swept Britain centuries ago.