Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/36

 20 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. tion, though it is very amusing to read his learned discourse upon these famihar articles of daily con- sumption, interlarded with Greek terms, and re- ference to the oivo's icpidipo9 of Atlienaeus and Herodotus. The symptoms of the sweating sickness were as follows : — it affected some particular part, attended with inward heat and burning, unquenchable thirst, restlessness, sickness at stomach and heart (though seldom vomiting), headache, delirium, then faint- ness and drowsiness ; the pulse quick and vehe- ment, and the breath short and labouring. Chil- dren, poor and old women were less subject to it — of others scarce any escaped the attack, and most died : in Shrewsbury, where it lasted seven months^ about a thousand perished. Even by travelling into France, or Flanders, the English, according to Caius, did not escape ; and what is stranger, " even the Scotch were free, and abroad, English only affected, and foreigners not aflTected in Eng- land." None recovered under twenty-four hours. It has been mentioned before that it first shewed itself in England in 1485 — it appeared again in 1506 — afterwards in 1517, when it was so violent that it killed in the space of three hours ; so that many of the nobility died, and of the vulgar sort in several towns half often perished. It appeared also in 1548, ^nd proved mortal then in the space of six hours : many of the courtiers died of it, and Henry VIII. himself was in danger. In 1529, and only then, it infested the Netherlands and Germany ; in which last country it did much mis- chief, and destroyed many, and particularly was the occasion of interrupting a conference at Mar-