Sweating Sickness – The Mysterious Illness Feared by Henry VIII by Emma Holbrook

A King, whose decision to not only break away from the Church in Rome and marry a whopping six times but to divorce two of them and behead another two, has earned him a place on the list of England’s most hated Kings. What you might be surprised to hear is, despite this king being famous for killing wives and former friends, there was one singular aspect of his life that he shared with his subjects and the rest of the world—his rather peculiar fear of deadly diseases, more specifically with a mysterious illness known as the Sweating Sickness. You would not think that this ambitious and fearsome King would be rendered speechless and left cowering in fear by something as common as a disease but it is true. It was the Sweating Sickness, a mysterious disease which origins continues to baffles historians and scientists alike, that struck fear deep into the heart of the English King who, upon hearing of a new epidemic within his kingdom, would be sent into a ‘wild panic’ and immediately flee to the countryside for safety. Apart from the fear that he should die without a living male heir, this deadly disease seemed to be the only thing that could frighten the King known far and wide for his cruel, tyrannical way of ruling. And so, this leaves the question of what exactly was the Sweating Sickness, where did it originate from and why did it cause so much fear in one of England’s most notorious Kings? History can tell us so much about the past and of the lives our ancestors lived but, sadly, it has not yet revealed the mysterious origins behind the Sweating Sickness, also known as the English Sweat. The first known outbreak of the Sweating Sickness very interestingly coincides with the defeat of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and the ascension of the first Tudor King and Henry VIII’s father; King Henry VII in the summer of 1485. Whilst England, alongside other European countries, was no stranger to deadly, contagious diseases such as the Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague which wiped out approximately 60% of the world’s population between 1346 and 1353, and smallpox, which left hideous scars, the Sweating Sickness was a new seemingly incurable disease that, at the very mention of an outbreak, left populations fearing for their lives. The outbreak of summer 1485 was the first ‘wave’ of outbreaks to occur within the next seventy years, with each one more disastrous than the last. In just the few short months until its disappearance in October 1485, the Sweating Sickness had left its mark. Over 15,000 Londoners were killed during the first six weeks of the epidemic which, out of an estimated population of 50,000 at the time, caused many to lock themselves up in their houses to prevent infection. It came with no warning and the disease seemed to kill all it encountered; the young and old, the sick and healthy, the rich and the poor. None were spared from its deathly touch. In fact, the new King Henry VII was so concerned about the seriousness of the disease that he had to postpone his own coronation and smartly chose to vacate to the countryside until it was declared safe to return to London. The fact that no-one knew where this disease came from or how to protect yourself from it made it all the more frightening—and this worried both Henry VII as well as his son and successor Henry VIII. The outbreak of the Sweating Sickness came exactly at the time when the Tudors ascended to the throne of England—and many did not see this as a mere coincidence. Some believed, and many historians consider this a possibility, that the disease was brought to England through the foreign merchants hired by Henry VII to help him conquer the English throne. Superstition dominated early modern England and many soon begun to believe that God had sent this new disease, the Sweating Sickness, to show his displeasure at the ascension of the Tudor dynasty in England. For many, this made sense considering how the Sweating Sickness first appeared shortly following Henry Tudor’s victory over Richard III and the fact that the disease would disappear as inexplicitly as it began was further proof that the Tudor dynasty was doomed to fail in the people’s eyes, at least. But what were the symptoms and how easily could the disease be caught? Unlike the plague or smallpox, the Sweating Sickness did not cause any skin issues such as a rash or scars, and what was even more frightening was how the sickness appeared without warning and could kill in as little as a few hours. The first symptom of the disease is within the name—sweating. Victims would experience a fever which led to an unbreakable sweat amongst other symptoms including chest and neck pains, headache, cold shivers, vomiting and shortness of breath. Often, the victim’s body would become so weak from the disease that they would be overcome with an extreme urge to sleep and dehydration. Shockingly, it could take anywhere between two to twenty-four hours for the victim to succumb to the disease with 30% to 50% of victims dying within the three to eighteen hours, according to official reports. Since no one understood where the disease came from or how to treat it since the disease could kill within hours and sometimes be diagnosed too late, this made it increasingly difficult to prevent the spread of the disease as close living quarters meant an entire household could become fatally ill within hours or even a day. And with no cure, many would dread the next outbreak of the disease as survival seemed bleak and even avoiding contamination seemed impossible.

Naturally, the health and safety of the King, and of his heirs, was of the highest priority; if the King had fallen ill with no male heir or the heir to the throne perished, chaos and conflict would arise throughout the Kingdom. And as Henry VIII tried endlessly to secure the needed male heir for his kingdom, his fear of catching a deadly disease like the sweating sickness must have occupied his mind a lot as he was once called ‘the most timid person you could meet’ by a man who visited his privy chamber. Henry VIII’s hypochondria meant that he submitted himself to daily examination by his expert physicians who would search for even the tiniest sign of illness and that he even maintained a medicine cabinet in his privy chamber, which was filled to the brim with all the latest medicines and even potions of his own devising. His obsession with health and fighting illness might seem a tad overdramatic but there might be a reason behind his hypochondria; the deaths of his mother and eldest brother. The whole world was shaken to its core when Prince Arthur Tudor, the heir to the throne and Henry VIII’s older brother, suddenly passed away at the age of fifteen on 2nd April 1502. Throughout his life, Prince Arthur seemed very susceptible to illness, though he was not as sickly as he has been portrayed, and upon his arrival at Ludlow Castle with his new wife, the couple suddenly begun suffering from a strange illness that left them bedbound. Though Catalina would survive and later marry Henry VIII, poor Arthur would succumb to his illness just five months into his marriage. Whilst the precise cause of Arthur’s death is unknown, historians believe he was suffering from tuberculosis rather than the Sweating Sickness as was rumoured at the time. The death of the crown prince would have devastated everyone, including Henry VII who now had to ensure his only surviving son, Henry VIII, did not fall victim to an illness like Arthur. Although Henry was only ten-years-old at the time of his brother’s death, the thought of suffering the same fate must have terrified him enough to take his health more seriously. Sadly, however, yet another family member’s death might have further driven him into obsessing over his health. Just under a year later on 11th February 1503, Queen Elizabeth of York, Henry’s mother, passed away on her thirty-seventh birthday after suffering from post-partum complications following the birth of her youngest daughter Katharine (who also perished) just nine days earlier. Losing both his mother and his older brother in the space of a year would have devastated Henry and whilst his mother’s cause of death did not necessarily impact him, it did make him more wary of his future wives’ births, especially Jane Seymour who might have also died of post-partum complications. Despite his brother’s death changing the course of history and making Henry VIII the new King of England, it might also have kickstarted Henry VIII’s lifelong obsession with health, medicine and fighting disease. The question remains—if the Sweating Sickness was a new, unexplainable disease, what did Tudor physicians believe caused or cured the disease? The Sweating Sickness had five ‘waves’ throughout England over a period of seventy years; 1485, 1507, 1517, 1528 before it completely vanished into thin air, as if it never existed, after a final epidemic in 1551, during the reign of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI. Over this seventy-year period, Tudor physicians offered many suggestions, often based off superstition and religion, for what brought the disease and supposedly how to prevent or even cure it. This included the famous Doctor Johannes Caius; a man named John Kays who donned the moniker Johannes Caius when he saw an opportunity to use the disease as a business move. Whilst many of the lower classes of society were easier victims for the disease, noblemen and members of the upper classes often fell ill too, only their wealthy purses meant they could afford any treatments to prevent death. Caius soon swooped in on this and began to target paranoid nobles who would pay huge sums of coin to try any remedy he suggested to prevent contamination. He also used the disease to write medical books including the 1552 The Sweating Sickness: A boke or counseill against the disease commonly called the sweate or sweatying sickness, which is now considered a medical classic. In his writing, Caius advised that avoiding evil mists and rotten fruit, frequent exercise and that those afflicted with the disease should avoid going outdoors, allow themselves to sweat as much as possible and drink more herbal concoctions. He spoke of how the disease ‘immediately killed some in opening their windows, some in praying with children in their street doors; some in one hour, many in two, it destroyed … As it found them, so it took them; some in sleep, some in wake, some in mirth, some in care, some in fasting and some full, some busy and some idle; and in one house sometime three, sometimes five, sometimes more, sometimes all.’ His words offer a small glimpse into the deadliness of the disease; as he said, it took the strong and the weak alike. Whilst his ‘remedies’ for preventing or surviving the disease were hardly efficient, many people found other remedies. Herbal remedies seemed to be the most common as the number of herbalists in Tudor England increased almost every year, however, there were some who took it to the extreme. Shock therapy, where the patient would be plunged into icy water said to shock the body into healing itself, and applying leeches to the skin to suck the diseased blood out of the victim are just two examples of the desperation people suffered and the levels of pain and suffering they were willing to endure just to cure themselves of disease. The disease frightened many and even the French Ambassador, Cardinal du Bellay, who was in England during the epidemic in June 1528 agreed, saying; ‘Everybody is terribly alarmed.’

Interestingly, Henry VIII had a great reason to fear the disease when, in 1528, his mistress Lady Anne Boleyn, who was not technically a mistress due to her refusal to sleep with the King, fell ill and was soon discovered to be suffering from the Sweating Sickness at her family’s home in Kent, Hever Castle. As soon as Anne Boleyn, along with her father Thomas and her brother George, begun to experience symptoms of the disease and reported it to her royal lover, the King, who stayed away out of fear of contracting it himself, immediately dispatched his second-best physician, William Butts, to attend to her—the King always kept his best physician close. Fortunately, whilst all three of the Boleyn family members survived this almost fatal encounter with the disease, another family member was not so lucky. Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn was made a widow by the sudden death of her husband William Carey who did not survive his fight with the disease and she herself had to implore the King to encourage her father to financially support her afterwards. Others who contracted and survived the disease include the King’s advisor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was very lucky indeed to survive several bouts of the disease—he must have been protected by his Lord, it seems. Even some of the King’s closest attendants were not immune as William Fitzwilliam, William Paget, and Henry Norris, one of the men executed for committing adultery with Anne Boleyn, all soon caught the disease but thankfully survived. Sadly, the disease also claimed the lives of the relatives of some of the King’s closest friends; his advisor Thomas Cromwell lost his wife and daughters between 1528-9 whilst the Duke of Suffolk’s two sons, Henry and Charles, died within hours of each other. The disease left chaos, death, and grief whenever it appeared, claiming innocent lives in huge numbers. Over the centuries, physicians and historians alike have attempted to explain the mystery behind the Sweating Sickness and, whilst we may never know the truth, some of them are quite interesting. From anthrax poisoning due to contaminated wool, relapsing fever, or a form of hantavirus spread through rodent faeces, the possibilities of what might have caused the Sweating Sickness are endless. However, in a sense, the disease can almost be compared to the coronavirus that we of the modern era have suffered from; it came suddenly and killed without mercy, and whilst we might have found a cure thanks to modern-day medicine, the amount of spreading and new strands always popping up is similar to the Sweating Sickness. Both were almost always fatal, easily spreadable, sometimes undetectable until it becomes serious and a disease that spread fear across the globe. However, if there is one thing we could wish from the coronavirus is that it would mysteriously disappear without a trace like the Sweating Sickness did in 1551—but did it evolve like COVID-19 and re-appear over a century later as the Picardy Sweat? We shall never know…