Have you heard of the "English sweating" epidemic that baffled medieval doctors, and which contemporary scholars believe is the cause of the Hanta virus?
Diseases posed a great and grave threat to human life and health during the Middle Ages. Most of these diseases were caused by a lack of interest in personal hygiene and the failure to diagnose diseases well, which caused the injury of people with countless types of diseases, which confused medieval doctors and did not find a cure for them But the disease, which remains until now a medical and historical mystery, is "English sweating".
A mysterious pandemic swept through Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The person with this disease first had fever and cold tremors, along with headaches and severe pain in the neck, shoulders and extremities, and a feeling of great fatigue. Fever, where the patient begins to sweat and thirst accompanied by delirium and rapid heartbeat and chest pain, while the last stage of the disease is when the patient collapses and falls asleep, but does not wake up again.
As for the most fearful aspect of this disease, it is the rapid death that afflicts those who have it, as most of its sufferers died within 18 hours after the symptoms appeared on them, and those who were able to withstand for 24 hours were recovering completely.
Sweating and five other epidemics prevailed between 1485 and 1551, as another disease called the "Picardy Suite", which spread in northern France between 1718 and 1874, appeared, when about 200 people were infected, but the death rate was small.
"English sweat" disease appeared for the first time during the reign of King (Henry VII) in 1485 immediately after the battle (Bosworth), this disease caused the death of more than 10 thousand people within one month, as it appeared for the second time in 1507 and was followed by another epidemic that appeared in France in the same year, killing half of the population of some regions, and the fourth appearance was in London in 1528 and spread quickly throughout England, where the King (Henry VIII) is said to have escaped from London for fear of contracting the disease, as he was moving from one house to another And he sleeps every night in a different bed.
The epidemic spread in (Hamburg) with an incredible speed and caused the death of more than a thousand people within a few weeks, and it invaded Europe and reached Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Poland and far eastern Russia, the last occurrence of this disease in 1551.
The strange thing about this disease is that it afflicted the rich and people belonging to the noble classes of society in particular, where both dukes and bishops fell victim to it, as monasteries were the most affected places, and the death rate among the clergy was very high, so that the royal family did not survive From this epidemic, where it is said that (Anne Boleyn) the wife of King (Henry VIII) had contracted the disease but was cured of it, as it is rumored that (Arthur Tudor), the eldest son of the English king (Henry VII), died after suffering from sweating.
Contemporary scientists believe that the cause of this disease is the Hanta virus, which is carried by rodents without being infected. As for humans, the Hanta virus causes a fatal lung infection that results in flu-like symptoms such as fever, cough, muscle pain, headache and lethargy, and the death rate can It reaches 36%.
The other suspected virus is the Arbu virus, which is spread by ticks and mosquitoes. It was noted that sweating disease was spreading after long periods of heavy rains and floods in some areas, where scientists blamed the emergence of this disease on the humid English climate. If the Arbo virus is the cause, it may explain to us why the epidemic has not spread to cooler parts of the British Isles, Scotland and Wales.
There are also other theories of the emergence and spread of this epidemic, including food poisoning caused by spoiled food, fungi and anthrax bacteria, but it is very difficult to determine exactly what is the cause of the emergence of sweating disease, it is a pandemic like other epidemics that appear suddenly and disappear suddenly, but after it has disappeared Twice, one of them appeared in the English village (Tiverton) in 1644 and killed 443 people. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a disease resembling a lot of sweating emerged and is known as "Picardy Sweet" or "military fever", which spread in Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Italy .
It is very rare for outbreaks of Hanta virus in modern times. During the Korean War (1953-1950), Korean hemorrhagic fever caused by Hanta virus invaded the military forces, and caused the death of one infected person among 10 infected with fever. This was the first time that It contains the discovery of the virus, which was named after the (Hantan) River in South Korea, and since then only a few people have contracted this virus worldwide.