CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST VISITATION OF THE DISEASE—1485. “Sound drums and trumpets, boldly and cheerfully, God and Saint George! Richmond and victory!”—SHAKESPEARE. SECT. 1.—ERUPTION. After the fate of England had been decided by the battle of Bosworth, on the 22d of August, 1485[349], the joy of the nation was clouded by a mortal disease which thinned the ranks of the warriors, and following in the rear of Henry’s victorious army, spread in a few weeks from the distant mountains of Wales to the metropolis of the empire. It was a violent inflammatory fever, which, after a short rigor, prostrated the powers as with a blow; and amidst painful oppression at the stomach, headache and lethargic stupor, suffused the whole body with a fetid perspiration. All this took place in the course of a few hours, and the crisis was always over within the space of a day and night[350]. The internal heat which the patient suffered was intolerable, yet every refrigerant was certain death. The people were seized with consternation when they saw that scarcely one in a hundred escaped[351], and their first impression was that a reign commencing with such horrors would doubtless prove most inauspicious[352]. At first the new foe was scarcely heeded; citizens and peasants went in joyful processions to meet the victorious army. Henry’s march from Bosworth towards London resembled a triumph, which was everywhere celebrated by festivals; for the nation, after its many years of civil war, looked forward to happier days than they had enjoyed under the blood-thirsty Richard. Very shortly, however, after the king’s entry into the capital on the 28th of August[353], the Sweating Sickness[354], as the disease was called, began to spread its ravages among the densely peopled streets of the city. Two lord mayors and six aldermen died within one week[355], having scarcely laid aside their festive robes; many who had been in perfect health at night, were on the following morning numbered among the dead. The disease for the most part marked for its victims robust and vigorous men; and as many noble families lost their chiefs, extensive commercial houses their principals, and wards their guardians, the festivities were soon converted into grief and mourning. The coronation of the king, which was expected to overcome the scruples that many entertained of his right to the throne, was of necessity postponed in this general distress[356], and the disease, in the mean time, spread without interruption and over the whole kingdom from east to west[357]. It is agreed that the pestilence did not commence till the very beginning of August, 1485, and was in obvious connexion with the circumstances of the times. To return to their native country had long been the ardent desire of the Earl of Richmond and his faithful followers. At the age of 15, (1471,) having escaped the vengeance of the House of York, and the assassins of Edward, he was overtaken by a storm, and fell into the hands of Francis II., Duke of Bretagne, who long detained him prisoner, but on the death of Edward, in 1483, supplied him with means to enforce his claims to the English throne, as the last descendant of the House of Lancaster. This first undertaking miscarried. A storm drove back the bold adventurer to Dieppe, and compelled him once more to throw himself, with his five hundred English followers, on the hospitality of Duke Francis. Richard’s influence with the Duke, however, rendered his stay there somewhat dangerous. Richmond withdrew privately, and endeavoured to gain over to his cause Charles VIII., who was yet a minor. A small subsidy of French troops, some pieces of artillery, and an adequate supply of money, were finally granted to his repeated solicitations. This little band was quickly augmented to 2000 men, who were all embarked, and on the 25th of July, 1485, they weighed anchor at Havre, and seven days after, the standard of Richmond was raised in Milford Haven[358]. They landed at the village of Dale, on the west side of the harbour, and on the evening of their arrival, or very early on the following morning, Richmond hastened to Haverfordwest, where no messenger had yet announced the renewal of the civil war. It appears that he reached Cardigan, on the northern shore, on the 3d of August, and for the first time granted to his small but increasing army the repose of an encampment. After a short halt, he set forward with confidence, crossed the Severn at Shrewsbury[359], turned from thence to Newport and Stafford, and pitched his camp at Litchfield, probably before the 18th of August[360]. The distance to this place from Milford Haven is 170 miles, and the road leads over wooded mountains and cultivated fields, without touching upon any swampy lands. Litchfield, however, lies low, and it was here that the army encamped in a damp situation, till it broke up for the neighbouring field of Bosworth. Thither Richmond, with scarcely 5000 men, and having his right wing covered by a morass, went to meet his deadly foe, whose army doubled his own. The combat was at first furious, but in two hours Lord Stanley crowned the conqueror with Richard’s diadem[361]. All these events so rapidly succeeded each other in the course of three weeks, that the knights and soldiers of Richmond, more and more excited every day by fear and hope, were scarcely equal to such exertions. Yet the very rapidity of the movements of the army was the cause why the disease could not spread so quickly, nor obstruct the final decision of Bosworth, although the report of it had already, before this event, spread universal terror; so that Lord Stanley, when authoritatively summoned by Richard to repair to his standard, sought to gain time, and, by way of excuse, alleged the prevalence of the new disease[362]. After the victory of Bosworth, King Henry remained two days in Leicester, and then without further delay hastened to London, which he reached in less than four days, unaccompanied by military parade, and attended only by a select body of followers. The remainder of his army, which stood greatly in need of repose after its severe toils, were not in a condition for marching, they therefore halted in the neighbouring towns, and were probably disbanded, according to the custom of the age[363]. The Sweating Sickness is said not to have made its appearance in London till the 21st of September[364], but historians have most likely intended by that day to mark the commencement of its virulence, which continued to the end of the following month, and lasted, therefore, in all, about five weeks. During this short period a large portion of the population[365] fell victims to the new epidemic, and the lamentation was without bounds so long as the people were ignorant that this fearful disease, unable to establish its dominion, would only pass through the country like a flash of lightning, and then again give place to the active intercourse of society and the cheering hope of life. There was no security against a second attack; for many who had recovered were seized by it, with equal violence, a second, and sometimes a third time, so that they had not even the slender consolation enjoyed by sufferers in the plague[366] and small-pox, of entire immunity after having once surmounted the danger[367]. Thus by the end of the year the disease had spread over the whole of England, and visited every place with the same severity as the metropolis. Many persons of rank, of the ecclesiastical and the civil classes, became its victims; and great was the consternation when, in the month of August, it broke out in Oxford. Professors and students fled in all directions: but death overtook many of them, and this celebrated university was deserted for six weeks[368]. Three months later it appeared at Croyland, and on the 14th of November, carried off Lambert Fossedyke, abbot of the monastery[369]. No authentic accounts from other quarters have been handed down to our times, but we may infer, from the general grief and anxiety which prevailed, that the loss of human life was very considerable. SECT. 2.—THE PHYSICIANS. The physicians could do little or nothing for the people in this extremity[370]. They are nowhere alluded to throughout this epidemic, and even those who might have come forward to succour their fellow citizens, had fallen into the errors of Galen, and their dialectic minds sank under this appalling phenomenon. This holds good even of the famous Thomas Linacre, subsequently physician in ordinary to two monarchs[371], and founder of the College of Physicians, in 1518. In the prime of his youth he had been an eye-witness of the events at Oxford, and survived even the second and third eruption of the Sweating Sickness; but in none of his writings do we find a single word respecting this disease, which is of such permanent importance. In fact, the restorers of the medical science of ancient Greece, who were followed by all the most enlightened men in Europe, with the single exception of Linacre, occupied themselves rather with the ancient terms of art than with actual observation, and in their critical researches overlooked the important events that were passing before their eyes[372]. This reminds us of the later Greek physicians, who for four hundred years paid no attention to the small-pox, because they could find no description of it in the immortal works of Galen[373]. No resource was therefore left to the terrified people of England but their own good sense, and this led them to the adoption of a plan of treatment, than which no physician in the world could have given them a better; namely, not to resort to any violent medicines, but to apply moderate heat, to abstain from food, taking only a small quantity of mild drink, and quietly to wait for four-and-twenty hours the crisis of this formidable malady. Those who were attacked during the day, in order to avoid any chill, immediately went to bed in their clothes, and those who sickened by night did not rise from their beds in the morning; while all carefully avoided exposing to the air even a hand or foot. Thus they anxiously guarded against heat or cold, so as not to excite perspiration by the former, nor to check it by the latter—for they well knew that either was certain death[374]. The report of the infallibility of this method soon spread over the whole kingdom, and thus towards the commencement of 1486, many were rescued from death. On New Year’s Day, a violent tempest arose in the south-east, and by purifying the atmosphere relieved the oppression under which the people laboured, and thus, to the joy of the whole nation, the epidemic was swept away without leaving a trace behind[375]. SECT. 3.—CAUSES. It was thought remarkable, even at that time, that the Sweating Sickness did not extend beyond the limits of England, and that, remaining the unenviable property of that nation, it did not even spread to Scotland, Ireland, or Calais which belonged to Britain. Much, doubtless, was owing to the peculiarity of the climate, more still to atmospherical changes, and something also to the habits of the people and the circumstances of the times. It plainly appeared in the sequel that the English Sweating Sickness was a spirit of the mist, which hovered amid the dark clouds. Even in ordinary years, the atmosphere of England is loaded with these clouds during considerable periods, and in damp seasons they would prove the more injurious to health, as the English of those times were not accustomed to cleanliness, moderation in their diet, or even comfortable refinements. Gluttony was common among the nobility as well as among the lower classes; all were immoderately addicted to drinking[376], and the manners of the age sanctioned this excess at their banquets and their festivities. If we consider that the disease mostly attacked strong and robust men—that portion of the people who abandoned themselves without restraint to all the pleasures of the table—while women, old men, and children, almost entirely escaped, it is obvious that a gross indulgence of the appetite must have had a considerable share in the production of this unparalleled plague. To this may be added, the humidity of the year 1485, which is represented by most chronicles as very remarkable[377]. Throughout the whole of Europe the rain fell in torrents, and inundations were frequent. Damp weather is not prejudicial to health if it be merely temporary, but if the rain be excessive for a series of years, so that the ground is completely saturated, and the mists attract baneful exhalations out of the earth, man must necessarily suffer from the noxious state of the soil and atmosphere. Under these circumstances epidemics must inevitably follow. The five preceding years had been unusually wet[378], 1485 proved equally so; the last hot and droughty summer was that of 1479[379]. Extensive inundations of the Tiber, the Po, the Danube, the Rhine, and most of the other great rivers, took place in 1480, and were attended with the usual consequences, the deterioration of the air, misery and disease[380]. The greatest inundation ever remembered in England was that of the Severn, in October, 1483. It was long afterwards called the Duke of Buckingham’s Great Water[381], because it frustrated the rebellion of this powerful subject against Richard III., whom he had been instrumental in placing upon the throne; and consequently defeated also the first enterprise of Henry VII. It lasted full ten days, and the tremendous ravages occasioned by the overwhelming torrent dwelt long in the memory of the people. SECT. 4.—OTHER EPIDEMICS. During the whole of this period the nations of Europe were visited with various and destructive plagues. In 1477, the Bubo-plague broke out in Italy, and raged without interruption till 1485[382]. It was accompanied by striking natural phenomena, among which we may reckon an enormous flight of locusts in 1478[383] and 1482, and remarkable inter-current diseases, such as inflammatory pain in the side, throughout the whole of Italy in 1482[384]. In Switzerland and Southern Germany malignant epidemics[385] appeared in the train of drought and famine in 1480 and 1481, while putrid fever accompanied by phrenites[386], prevailed in Westphalia, Hesse and Friesland. There had never been in the memory of the inhabitants of these districts so many ignes fatui as during this period. There too the people suffered from the failure of the harvest, so that it was necessary to obtain supplies from Thuringen[387]. France, where, under the fearful reign of Louis XI., oppression and misery seemed to mock the gifts of heaven, became in 1482, after a two years’ scarcity, the scene of a devastating plague. It was an inflammatory fever with delirium, accompanied by such intense pain in the head, that many dashed out their brains against the wall, or rushed into the water; while others, after incessantly running to and fro, died in a state of the greatest agony. According to the notion of the age, this disease was attributed to astral influences, for it could not have been brought on only by famine, which left to the poor peasantry, south of the Loire, nothing but the roots of wild herbs to support their miserable existence[388], since the higher classes were also frequently attacked[389]. This fever was without doubt accompanied by inflammation of the meninges, or even of the brain itself, and was, perhaps, identical with that which at the same period desolated the north-west of Germany as far as the shores of the North Sea, only that it was heightened by the greater natural vivacity and miserable situation of the French people, who were kept in a state of perpetual dread by the cruel executions of Louis[390]. This pestilence occasioned the king to follow the advice of his morose physician[391] in ordinary, and to keep himself closely confined within the town of Plessis des Tours. It was prohibited under a heavy penalty to speak in his presence of death which was carrying off its victims in all directions, and forty crossbowmen kept guard in the fosse of the castle to put to death every living thing which might approach[392]. Two years after, in 1484, virulent diseases[393] again visited Germany and Switzerland; and thus it seemed as if the nations were everywhere threatened with death and destruction. SECT. 5.—RICHMOND’S ARMY. From these data, which might easily be extended[394], it is evident that the Sweating Sickness of 1485 did not make its appearance without great and general premisory events, which for a series of years imparted to the people of England a susceptibility to dangerous and unusual diseases. If, besides this, we take into account the gloomy temperament of the English, and the general depression of their spirits, in consequence of the sanguinary wars of the red and white roses, a series of events which seems to have shaken their faith in an overruling Providence, we may readily conceive that it would require but a very slight impulse to excite a powerful commotion in the mysterious mechanism of the human body. This impulse was evidently given by the landing of Richmond’s army in the very year when great and portentous evils were anticipated; for on the 16th of March, the same day when Queen Ann, the unfortunate wife of Richard III., expired, a total eclipse of the sun enveloped all Europe in darkness, and gave rise to gloomy prognostications[395]. Even under ordinary circumstances, wars beget pestilential disorders—how much more inevitably must these have arisen in the then existing state of affairs! Richmond’s army consisted not of brave men animated by zeal to avenge their dishonoured country or to serve a good cause. It was composed of wandering freebooters, “vile landskneckte,” as they were called in Germany, who assembled under his banner at Havre,—sharpshooters formed under Louis XI., who recklessly pillaged Normandy, and whom Charles VIII. gladly made over to Henry, in order to free his own peaceful territories from so great a scourge[396]. This army may not have been worse than others of the same period[397]; but cooped up as they were for a whole week in dirty ships, they doubtless carried about with them all the material for germinating the seeds of a pestilential disorder, which broke out soon after on the banks of the Severn and in the camp at Litchfield. SECT. 6.—NATURE OF THE SWEATING SICKNESS. PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION. Before we proceed further, some account is here required of the nature of this disease. It was an inflammatory rheumatic fever, with great disorder of the nervous system. This assumption is supported by the manner of its origin and its especial characteristic of being accompanied by a profuse and injurious perspiration. From the judgment that we are now capable of forming of the pernicious influences which prevailed in the year 1485, it may, without hesitation, be admitted that the humidity of that and of the preceding years affected the functions of the lungs and of the skin, and disturbed the relation of this very important tissue to the internal organs of life. This is the usual commencement of rheumatic fevers, which bear the same relation to the Sweating Sickness as slight symptoms bear to severe ones of the same kind. The predominance of affections of the brain and of the nerves, however, gave to the English epidemic a peculiar character. The functions of the eighth pair of nerves were violently disordered in this disease, as was shewn by oppressed respiration and extreme anxiety with nausea and vomiting, symptoms to which the moderns attach much importance[398]. The stupor and profound lethargy shew that there was injury of the brain, to which, in all probability, was added a stagnation of black blood in the torpid veins. We must also take into the account a previous corruption and decomposition of the blood, which, even if we should be disinclined to infer their existence from the offensive perspiration of the disease itself, were proved by striking phenomena of a similar nature that occurred in Central Europe about the same time; for the scurvy prevailed as an epidemic, more especially in Germany, in the year 1486, and with such severe and unusual symptoms, that people were inclined to regard it as a totally new malady[399]. Now such is the vital connexion of different functions that every impediment to respiration, whether in consequence of pressure from without, or through spasm and irritation of the nerves from within, or even from a morbid condition of the circulating fluid, infallibly calls forth the compensating activity of the skin, and the body becomes suffused with an alleviating perspiration. Thus it plainly appears that the profuse perspiration in the disease of which we are treating, notwithstanding its apparently injurious tendency, was the result of a commotion excited on the part of the lungs, which was critical with respect to the disease itself; and this is in accordance with all the causes of which we still have any knowledge. Noxious and even stinking fogs penetrated into the organs of respiration, and as the blood was thus so much affected in its composition and in its vitality that its corrupt state was only to be obviated by profuse perspiration, the inevitable consequence was an interference with the extensive functions of the eighth pair of nerves, which interference, as later writers relate, extended in many cases to the spinal marrow, and brought on violent convulsions[400]. We have here only one essential cause, out of many, for this gigantic disease, and one too which accounts for its advance and spread. It is highly probable, for the reasons stated, and as according with all human experience, that it first broke out in the army of Henry the VIIth, and beyond all doubt that it spread from west to east, and afterwards in a retrograde course from east to west. With the perfectly equable operation of the predisposing causes, from which the disease ought indubitably to have broken out all over England at the same time, had the condition of the atmosphere been its sole occasion, we must additionally presume a special cause for its progress through towns and villages. This, according to all appearance, was to be found in the air, impregnated with foul odours, which surrounded the sick, and abounded in the tents and dwellings in which Henry the VIIth’s soldiers, after various privations and hard service, amid storms and rain, were closely crowded together. Of both causes modern observation furnishes analogous examples. Intermittent fevers spread more easily in air which is contaminated by sick people, and bands of soldiers, themselves in perfect health, have not unfrequently conveyed camp fever to remote places. It signifies very little by what expressions of the schools these occurrences are designated; it is best perhaps to abstain from them altogether, for they are all inadequate, and occasion misconceptions. Contemporaries, however, were certainly justified in not admitting the notion of contagion in the same sense as when the term is applied to the plague, with which they were well acquainted[401]. For very frequently cases which were not to be explained on the principle of contagion communicated by persons diseased, occurred among people of rank, and manifestly arose independently of the usual causes. In these cases the fear of death, which everywhere was the harbinger of the disease, and threw the nerves of the chest into spasmodic commotion, gave an impulse to the malady for which the quality of the atmosphere and luxury had long made preparation. Had this view of contemporaries been even less impartial than it really was, it would have found the most striking confirmation in the sudden cessation of the pestilence throughout the whole country. For the destructive spirits of air, which would not have been discerned even by the proud naturalists of the nineteenth century, dispersed and vanished for half an age in the fury of the tempest which raged on the 1st of January, 1486.