Speaker 1: In this same year, a new kind of sickness came
Speaker 1: suddenly through the whole region, even after the first entering
Speaker 1: of the King into this aisle, which was so sore,
Speaker 1: so painful, and sharp, that the like was never heard
Speaker 1: of to any man's remembrance before that time. For suddenly
Speaker 1: a deadly and burning sweat invaded their bodies and vexed
Speaker 1: their blood, and with a most ardent heat, infested the
Speaker 1: stomach and the head. Grievously. By the tormenting and vexation
Speaker 1: of which sickness, men were so sore, handled and so
Speaker 1: painfully pained, that if they were laid in their bed,
Speaker 1: being not able to suffer the importunate heat, they cast
Speaker 1: away the sheets and all the clothes lying on the bed.
Speaker 1: If they were in their apparel and vestures, they would
Speaker 1: put off all their garments, even to their shirts. Others
Speaker 1: were so dry that they drank the cold water to
Speaker 1: quench their importunate heat and insatiable thirst. Others that could
Speaker 1: or at the least wood, abide the heat and stink.
Speaker 1: For indeed the sweat had a great and strong caused
Speaker 1: clothes to be laid upon them as much as they
Speaker 1: could bear to drive out the sweat, if it might
Speaker 1: be all in manner, as soon as the sweat took them,
Speaker 1: or within a short space after yielded up their ghost,
Speaker 1: so that of all of them that sickened, there was
Speaker 1: not one amongst a hundred that escaped, insomuch that, beside
Speaker 1: the great number which deceased. Within the city of London,
Speaker 1: two mayors successively died of the same disease within eight days,
Speaker 1: and six aldermen. And when any person had fully and
Speaker 1: completely sweat twenty four hours, for so long did the
Speaker 1: strength of this plague hold them, he should be then
Speaker 1: clearly delivered of his disease, yet not so clean rid
Speaker 1: of it, but that he might shortly relapse and fall
Speaker 1: again into the same evil pit. Yeay again, and twice again,
Speaker 1: as many a one indeed did, which after the third
Speaker 1: time died of the same.
Speaker 2: Huh. I was trying to like listen for clues. And
Speaker 2: this is gonna be a fun episode, Aarin, It.
Speaker 1: Is gonna be a very fun episode. I am so excited.
Speaker 1: So that was a contemporary account of the sweating sickness.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure actually which epidemic, but I found it
Speaker 1: in a paper by flood from two thousand and three. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Welsh.
Speaker 2: And I'm Erin Ollman Updyke.
Speaker 1: And this is this podcast Will Kill You.
Speaker 2: And today we're talking about sweating sickness.
Speaker 1: Sweating sickness it is. I'm like so excited because a
Speaker 1: lot of people have suggested this over the years as
Speaker 1: we've been doing this podcast, and I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds really interesting. And I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know about sweating sickness, like you know, people sweat and
Speaker 1: they died and that was it. And then like I
Speaker 1: started to read more about it and I was like, what, I'm.
Speaker 2: Excited because I know literally nothing about it. Like when
Speaker 2: people have suggested it, I've been like, okay, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what it is.
Speaker 1: I am very excited. So the way that we did
Speaker 1: this episode, and I think it's like the way that
Speaker 1: we did the dancing plague episode, Yeah, is where I
Speaker 1: like research the historical epidemics. And by the way, sweating
Speaker 1: sickness is a mystery, so this is like a mysterious
Speaker 1: epidemic episode.
Speaker 2: Right, It's going to be like our encephalitis lethargica and
Speaker 2: our dancing plague episode. So a little different than tradition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so yeah, I did all the research for
Speaker 1: like the history of it as usual, but instead of
Speaker 1: of Aaron taking on, oh, this is the biological cause
Speaker 1: and the epidemiology of it, I was like, hey, research
Speaker 1: these five things that people think it was right, and.
Speaker 2: So then we'll go through them and look at the
Speaker 2: biology of these you know, possible explanations and try and
Speaker 2: figure out what we think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think this will kind of
Speaker 1: be like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so exciting, like what's going to happen, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, and then ultimately like you're not really
Speaker 1: going to get a very fully satisfying answer.
Speaker 2: Do you mean you think that, like, because this has
Speaker 2: been how many hundreds of years that we have yet
Speaker 2: to figure out exactly what caused it? You don't think
Speaker 2: we're gonna solve it on this podcast today?
Speaker 1: We're not. I mean I feel like with some exhumations
Speaker 1: of some royal bodies or something and then testing some DNA,
Speaker 1: that is possible, but also yeah, that has like not
Speaker 1: that has been tried, and no permission has ever been granted.
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, all right, we'll do our best.
Speaker 1: We'll do our best, so Aaron, Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: special time.
Speaker 2: It is. I checked, it is quarantin any time.
Speaker 1: It is quarantiny time. This week we are drinking sweat
Speaker 1: it out, Sweat it out, and in sweat it out
Speaker 1: is it's going to be like a little bit of
Speaker 1: a spicy and smoky situation of course to.
Speaker 2: Like really give you that sheen exactly.
Speaker 1: We want you to. We want to see those beads
Speaker 1: of perspiration on your dewey forehead. We have mes call
Speaker 1: lime juice, Habanero, simple syrup, mango juice, and orange liqueur yum.
Speaker 2: And we will post the full recipe for that quarantini
Speaker 2: as well as our non alcoholic place Brita on all
Speaker 2: of our social media channels and this podcast will kill
Speaker 2: you dot Com.
Speaker 1: We will do.
Speaker 2: We have any other business to talk about.
Speaker 1: We do have one small piece of business. We have
Speaker 1: a correction.
Speaker 2: Actually yes we do so.
Speaker 1: In our last episode, which was on Rubella, one of
Speaker 1: the terms that we used was differently abled and a
Speaker 1: bunch of people have reached out to let us know
Speaker 1: that that is actually not the preferred term, and we
Speaker 1: apologize for doing that, and we will do better in
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and thank you, honestly, thank you for pointing that
Speaker 2: out and people pointing it out in a way that
Speaker 2: makes it easy for us to learn, and so now
Speaker 2: we can teach everyone else too. So the preferred term
Speaker 2: is disabled, not differently able.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we appreciate it. Do we have any other
Speaker 1: business to take care of?
Speaker 2: We have merch which is amazing created by incredible artists,
Speaker 2: available on this podcast We Kill You dot Com. Under merch,
Speaker 2: we have a bookshop link as well as a Goodreads
Speaker 2: list if you're interested in finding or purchasing books that
Speaker 2: we recommend on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Ooh, and we're getting transcripts yay.
Speaker 2: So you can read more. Yes, we're very excited. These
Speaker 2: have been very long awaited and we'll be available on
Speaker 2: this podcast We Kill You dot Com. Just click on transcripts.
Speaker 2: We're super excited. Heck yeah, I think that's enough business.
Speaker 1: Well, should we dive into this episode?
Speaker 2: Erin, I can't wait. I really like, I'm not kidding
Speaker 2: when I say I know nothing about sweating sickness and
Speaker 2: I want to learn all about it.
Speaker 1: Excellent, Well, I will dive right in right after this
Speaker 1: break ready. Oh yeah, sweat go.
Speaker 2: Oh erin.
Speaker 1: I feel like planned and rehearse jokes are probably the best, right.
Speaker 2: Definitely, yeah, absolutely, I mean I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 1: Suntana is overrated, quick wit, absolutely not, who needs it? Okay?
Speaker 1: But for real? The English sweating sickness was basically a
Speaker 1: series of five epidemics occurring in fourteen eighty five, fifteen
Speaker 1: oh eight, fifteen seventeen, fifteen twenty eight, and fifteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: primarily in England and only England.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Its entire history takes place within that not quite seventy
Speaker 1: year timeframe. It caused nowhere near the same level of
Speaker 1: population devastation that plague epidemics did. And and I'm not
Speaker 1: talking just about the Black Death, but I mean the
Speaker 1: outbreaks of plague that continued across England and the rest
Speaker 1: of Europe for centuries after. And if it wasn't a
Speaker 1: plague year, people were still no stranger to deadly illnesses
Speaker 1: that would burn through a city or a village and
Speaker 1: wipe out one side of a family tree within a
Speaker 1: matter of days. Life was precarious. Death was all always
Speaker 1: hovering at the edge. Hence, like all the rad metal
Speaker 1: art from that time, all the skeletons. So with, so
Speaker 1: with these epidemics of plague, typhoid, malaria, influenza, smallpox, et cetera,
Speaker 1: constantly on rotation. What made sweating sickness so remarkable to
Speaker 1: people in that time? What was it about sweating sickness
Speaker 1: that led to such terror and panic that Henry the eighth,
Speaker 1: for example, fled with his members of court to avoid
Speaker 1: the sickness somewhat in vain, I might add, And what
Speaker 1: is it about this mysterious yet very isolated and short
Speaker 1: lived illness that still leads people in the twenty first century,
Speaker 1: five hundred years later to talk about it, publish articles
Speaker 1: about it, highlighted in novels and TV shows.
Speaker 2: Let's find out, Yeah.
Speaker 1: England in fourteen eighty five was at a bit of
Speaker 1: a turning point, the War of the Roses finally drawing
Speaker 1: to a close, with Richard the Third losing his life
Speaker 1: and his army defeated at the decisive Battle of bosworth Field,
Speaker 1: which led to Henry, Earl of Richmond taking the throne
Speaker 1: as Henry the Seventh and kicking off a one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen ish year rule by the House of Tudor
Speaker 1: in England. Okay, and like all of that stuff about
Speaker 1: the history of the English royal families and succession and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I think is really interesting, but like
Speaker 1: that's not what we do in this podcast. I'm not
Speaker 1: equipped to do it, and so that's all I'm going
Speaker 1: to say about that. But the reason that I mention
Speaker 1: it is because the year fourteen eighty five was not
Speaker 1: just this end of the War of the Roses. We
Speaker 1: care about it because that's when we first see sweating sickness,
Speaker 1: and the exact date within that year of the earliest
Speaker 1: cases is a little bit controversial because some early chroniclers
Speaker 1: claimed that it was brought over at the time of
Speaker 1: the battle by Henry's French mercenaries, but that's actually unlikely
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, among them the fact that
Speaker 1: there aren't any descriptions of this disease in France during
Speaker 1: that time, and that there were sporadic cases reported elsewhere
Speaker 1: in England prior to this battle, which took place in
Speaker 1: late August August Okay, but where there may have been
Speaker 1: scattered cases throughout England earlier in the summer of fourteen
Speaker 1: eighty five. Later it had erupted into a full on outbreak.
Speaker 1: In early September, the mysterious sweating sickness had spread to Oxford.
Speaker 1: By late September, it had reached London, and by October
Speaker 1: it was in most of the western and southern counties.
Speaker 1: One contemporary chronicler reported that it had killed fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: people in London, which is surely an exaggeration because that
Speaker 1: would have been about a third of London's population at
Speaker 1: the time, But that does just further illustrate the impression
Speaker 1: that it left on the people who were witnessing this
Speaker 1: illness sweep through and with this impression was just of
Speaker 1: total helplessness and devastation. But what were they seeing? Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I guess maybe before I go through the next
Speaker 1: few epidemics, I should probably describe sweating sickness a little
Speaker 1: more detail.
Speaker 2: I am like on edge, right, you know, I can
Speaker 2: tell you literally as you're talking, so that I can
Speaker 2: try and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, this is great because I get to pretend
Speaker 1: to be you in this In this episode, it starts
Speaker 1: with a fever.
Speaker 2: With a fever.
Speaker 1: Yes, I never get to say that, and it actually does.
Speaker 1: It actually starts with a fever okay, cool, and it
Speaker 1: comes on quickly. One minute, you're doing whatever it is
Speaker 1: people were doing in England in the fourteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, like maybe you were rolling out some rye dough,
Speaker 1: or you were tending to your crops, or you were
Speaker 1: writing a sermon denounce it Martin Luther and his ninety
Speaker 1: five THESS or whatever. Just casual, just cash stuff. And
Speaker 1: the next minute you feel this slight fever coming on,
Speaker 1: and along with that fever an intense sweat. Okay, this
Speaker 1: isn't any old, heavy after workout type sweat. This is unprecedented,
Speaker 1: not only because of the volume of moisture leaking from
Speaker 1: your armpits and beating up all of your skin, but
Speaker 1: also from the vile stench accompanying it. What fetid, corrupt, putrid,
Speaker 1: loathsome These are just some of the words that contemporary
Speaker 1: physicians or scholars use to describe this sweat.
Speaker 2: Okay, but can I already take a time out and
Speaker 2: ask a question? Of course, this is a Roles reversed sarre,
Speaker 2: and now I know how you feel. Okay, are people stinking?
Speaker 2: Like is it the sweat that is stinky or is
Speaker 2: it just that like it's fourteen eighty five. People don't
Speaker 2: have great hygiene, and so when you sweat, you smell yourself,
Speaker 2: and so everyone's sweating, and so now they stink, Like
Speaker 2: is it more stinky than other illness sweat? I'm confused.
Speaker 1: Well, so I can't answer that except for the fact
Speaker 1: that the horrible smell was noted in like all of
Speaker 1: the descriptions, okay, which like would lead me to believe
Speaker 1: that there is something special about this sweat, because how
Speaker 1: do you avoid smelling yourself? Like you know, We'll bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just going through what you asked me to research, Aaron,
Speaker 2: and already I'm like, well, no idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it is possible. Like so there are
Speaker 1: some modern scholars that say, well, perhaps the excessive sweat
Speaker 1: was due to anxiety, because the fever wasn't all that high,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that burning, or it didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be It seemed like a slight fever, and so the
Speaker 1: successive sweat seemed strange. But it also was incredibly notable,
Speaker 1: like it was it's in the name.
Speaker 2: It's in the name.
Speaker 1: They called its sweating sickness. Yeah, so I can't answer
Speaker 1: you about the smell part. But I would have to
Speaker 1: believe that, like at a certain point you would have
Speaker 1: gotten accustomed to how much you and everyone around you stank.
Speaker 2: Right, and so then this is above and beyond fourteen
Speaker 2: eighty five stink.
Speaker 1: It seems to be. Okay, that's the sense I got
Speaker 1: from this, right, Okay, Okay, So this sweating, which never
Speaker 1: seems to cease, brings on an unquenchable thirst. Okay, your
Speaker 1: heart starts racing, your back and arms and legs ache,
Speaker 1: You feel stabbing pains in your stomach and bowels, and
Speaker 1: oh my god, does your head hurt so badly that
Speaker 1: you're having a hard time keeping a grasp on reality.
Speaker 1: If you're lucky enough to have been close to home
Speaker 1: when the symptoms began, you find yourself unable to crawl
Speaker 1: out of bed. And if you weren't so lucky, you
Speaker 1: lay on the ground where you stood when you first
Speaker 1: felt the illness coming on. As you lay there, sweating
Speaker 1: rancid sweat, guts oiling, body aching, head absolutely pounding, delirious,
Speaker 1: your breathing starts to become more and more shallow, and
Speaker 1: a great heaviness seems to settle on your chest. Maybe
Speaker 1: you pile on more and more blankets or clothes to
Speaker 1: try to keep the sweat in, which might have been
Speaker 1: prescribed by your quote unquote doctor. Or you drink as
Speaker 1: much lukewarm liquid as you can get down. But what
Speaker 1: you really want to do, what your body really wants
Speaker 1: you to do, is sleep, and so you close your
Speaker 1: eyes and give in. But just like your insatiable thirst,
Speaker 1: there never seems to be an amount of sleep that's
Speaker 1: enough to make you feel rested. If you can endure
Speaker 1: the first twenty four hours of this sweating, aching, burning, breathlessness,
Speaker 1: you're probably in the clear. The relapses leading to death
Speaker 1: were common, but according to writings from the time, few
Speaker 1: escape the illness, and most succumb to death within a
Speaker 1: few hours. A few hours of symptom on the set.
Speaker 1: If you are well at lunch, you could be dead
Speaker 1: by dinner quote But all alike died either as soon
Speaker 1: as the fever began or not long after, so that
Speaker 1: of all the persons infected, barely one in one hundred
Speaker 1: escape death. Whoa The precise cause of death was unclear
Speaker 1: still is unclear, but there are some isolated reports of
Speaker 1: people recovering after being given an enema, which suggests along
Speaker 1: with the list of symptoms, that severe dehydration may have
Speaker 1: played a major role.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So now, after hearing this description of sweating sickness, which
Speaker 1: I based off of a few contemporary accounts by Thomas
Speaker 1: Forrest Jeer and John Keyes who lived through the fourteen
Speaker 1: eighty five and fifteen fifty one epidemics, respectively, I think
Speaker 1: we can mostly answer my earlier question as to why
Speaker 1: sweating sickness left such an a depression on people at
Speaker 1: that time, even though you know, epidemics of sweating sickness
Speaker 1: were nearly as widespread or devastating as something like the plague.
Speaker 1: This was a terrifying, rap and rapid disease that would
Speaker 1: kill you within a few hours.
Speaker 2: Everyone's dying from it. I need to know more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, Well here we go. Okay, So what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do is I'm going to talk first a
Speaker 1: little bit about the characteristics of sweating sickness and then
Speaker 1: sort of go through each of the epidemics, and then
Speaker 1: I think, and then I want to hear from you
Speaker 1: about the different diseases that you have, and we'll try
Speaker 1: to like symptom match. Yeah, and then at the same time,
Speaker 1: like I have sort of at the end of my notes,
Speaker 1: like an epidemiological breakdown of things like who had affected,
Speaker 1: where it happened, when it happened, et cetera. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And the rapid thing I mean, like how quickly people died.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be just you know, the exaggeration
Speaker 1: or drama of the fourteen and fifteen hundreds, like one
Speaker 1: of the authors or one of these scholars wrote that quote.
Speaker 1: We saw two priests standing together and speaking together and
Speaker 1: saw both of them die suddenly. Also in the last day,
Speaker 1: we see the wife of a tailor who suddenly died.
Speaker 1: Another young man walking by the street fell down suddenly
Speaker 1: what immediately? Some were killed opening their windows, some in
Speaker 1: playing with children in their street, some in one hour,
Speaker 1: many and two. It destroyed as it found them. So
Speaker 1: it took them, some in sleep, some in wake, some
Speaker 1: in mirth, some in care, some fasting, and some full,
Speaker 1: some busy, and some idol.
Speaker 2: What Aaron, I know, I know, and what you're telling
Speaker 2: me too, is like the number one symptom is the
Speaker 2: fever and sweat fever.
Speaker 1: Sweat, rapid death. There's also seems to be difficulty breathing, so.
Speaker 2: Okay, but how much of that is just because you've
Speaker 2: been sweating so much and your heart rate is so
Speaker 2: high that now you're just like to kipnik because your
Speaker 2: body is like on overdrive, which is what it sounds like.
Speaker 2: More than like that you're a veterinary. Any pulmonary issues, right,
Speaker 2: there's no cough, there's no spuedum, there's no oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: airin it.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there doesn't seem to be a cough.
Speaker 1: There's no rash like I no rash, Yeah, what I know,
Speaker 1: I know, Okay, Okay. The people living in England during
Speaker 1: the time of the Sweat were no stranger to a
Speaker 1: quick and unexpected death, but this was shocking, like even
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. And another reason that it may have
Speaker 1: stood out was not just how rapidly it seemed to
Speaker 1: descend on a village or town, but also how quickly
Speaker 1: it left. So within let's say, like five days, you
Speaker 1: might see the same number of burials you would normally
Speaker 1: see in several months. It's just this big blip on
Speaker 1: the radar, whereas outbreaks of plague and influenza and smallpox
Speaker 1: and other infectious diseases would show up in more of
Speaker 1: like this rolling wave fashion, slow build sustained intensity and
Speaker 1: then a gradual decline, And sweating sickness was like a
Speaker 1: rogue wave, just like boom right in the middle.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And this character and this characteristic of sweating sickness is
Speaker 1: also super useful for a present day analysis or investigation
Speaker 1: into the disease because it allows researchers to identify likely
Speaker 1: outbreaks of sweating sickness using parish registers which recorded baptisms, marriages,
Speaker 1: and burials among other things. Okay, and so even if
Speaker 1: a parish register didn't note that it was specifically the
Speaker 1: sweat that was responsible for a burst of death, you
Speaker 1: can use information from nearby registers to note likely outbreaks
Speaker 1: and to estimate the impact that an epidemic of sweating
Speaker 1: sickness had on a particular village or a town, and
Speaker 1: to also study geographical variation in outbreaks. So not only
Speaker 1: was the sweating sacness deadly and lightning fast, it also
Speaker 1: appeared to be brand new and unknown outside of England,
Speaker 1: at least at the time of the fourteen eighty five epidemic.
Speaker 1: And so, like we heard in the first hand account,
Speaker 1: a new kind of sickness came through the whole region,
Speaker 1: which was so sore, so painful, and sharp that the
Speaker 1: like was never heard of to any man's remembrance before
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 2: I'm really having a hard time with this.
Speaker 1: I know, I love it. And this this newness also
Speaker 1: played into the explanations put forth by scholars who lived
Speaker 1: during that time. So remember, germ theory is hundreds of
Speaker 1: years away at this point, and so superstition or meteorological
Speaker 1: or celestial explanations really took kind of front and center.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I'm not surprised, like I'm leading that way right now.
Speaker 1: I know, I know. Maybe it was punishment for supporting
Speaker 1: Henry the seventh, or maybe it was the way that
Speaker 1: the planets were aligned, or maybe it was just bad air,
Speaker 1: bad air. What did seem clear was that there seemed
Speaker 1: to be no way to predict or control when it
Speaker 1: emerged and when it disappeared, which it only did a
Speaker 1: handful of times, never to be seen again.
Speaker 2: Or was it I don't know, Erin you tell me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now I'm going to go through these sweating
Speaker 1: sickness epidemics briefly, just finish up the timeline, and then
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you, okay, all right, So
Speaker 1: the fourteen eighty five epidemic of sweating sickness arrived in
Speaker 1: mid to late summer and disappeared within a few months,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until fifteen oh eight that the sweat
Speaker 1: showed up again. And there isn't a whole lot of
Speaker 1: information about this particular outbreak, maybe because it seemed to
Speaker 1: be less extensive than the previous one. But one important
Speaker 1: thing to note is that it began, like the previous one,
Speaker 1: in summer, so June fifteen oh eight, and burned out
Speaker 1: by October that same year. Okay, And again this epidemic
Speaker 1: seemed to be restricted to England, and I mean just England, like,
Speaker 1: not even Wales or Scotland.
Speaker 2: What okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And next we have fifteen seventeen, again beginning near
Speaker 1: the end of June and stopping by the end of October,
Speaker 1: at which point it was overshadowed by an outbreak of
Speaker 1: the plague that was apparently much more devastating, so which
Speaker 1: is why we probably don't know a whole lot about
Speaker 1: that one. And like the previous two epidemics, this one
Speaker 1: was again constrained to England and primarily in London, although
Speaker 1: nearby areas were affected, so like Oxford and Cambridge were
Speaker 1: said to have become ghost towns during this outbreak, and
Speaker 1: four hundred students at Oxford reportedly died within a week.
Speaker 1: What there is a lot.
Speaker 2: Four hundred students, So we're talking young people. Yep, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: that's an important piece of information.
Speaker 1: It is. And the fourth epidemic, which occurred in fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, broke with the established pattern of epidemics in
Speaker 1: that this one also seemed to cross the English Channel
Speaker 1: to continental Europe the following year, and this outbreak also
Speaker 1: seemed to be particularly devastating, with some reports of up
Speaker 1: to forty thousand people in London becoming infected, although only
Speaker 1: two thousand dying. And this nineteen twenty eight epidemic is
Speaker 1: the one that Henry the eighth fled from with many
Speaker 1: members of his court, although several of them died, some
Speaker 1: only after like an hour or two of symptoms appearing.
Speaker 1: What and just like just to further illustrate how quickly
Speaker 1: this came on and how rapidly devastating it could be.
Speaker 1: At the Archbishop of Canterbury's house, eighteen members of the
Speaker 1: household died of the sweat in just four hours.
Speaker 2: What I'm losing it erin.
Speaker 1: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: It's eight died within four Okay, I mean this doesn't
Speaker 2: even sound like an infectious disease.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, interesting that you should say put a pin
Speaker 1: in that. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also Anne Bolin became infected but recovered.
Speaker 2: Okay. I feel like, okay, because I remember you saying
Speaker 2: that this was in the Tutors and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: should I watch that season? But then I didn't because
Speaker 2: I didn't want to learn about it. But also it
Speaker 2: was in the first season, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: It was in the it was Yeah, I watched, like,
Speaker 1: I didn't manage to watch the entire episode. But it's
Speaker 1: season one, episode seven.
Speaker 2: Okay, I definitely have seen it, but it was long
Speaker 2: enough ago that I don't remember anything except like a
Speaker 2: vague running down the halls being sweaty or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure how representative it was.
Speaker 1: I also started reading Wolf Hall, which also apparently portrays
Speaker 1: like sweating sickness epidemics because it takes place during the
Speaker 1: same time, covers the same people, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But I also that book is a lot bigger than
Speaker 1: I thought it was, so didn't quite make it all
Speaker 1: the way through anyway. And so again with this fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight epidemic. The disease emerged in June and disappeared
Speaker 1: in September. But the following year, fifteen twenty nine, is
Speaker 1: when we see a similar disease appear in continental Europe,
Speaker 1: beginning in July in Germany and Austria and then spreading
Speaker 1: to the Netherlands, Poland, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Lithuania,
Speaker 1: Russia and elsewhere. So like all over and by September
Speaker 1: it was gone. And there's been some discussion as to
Speaker 1: whether or not this disease on continental Europe was the
Speaker 1: same as the English sweating sickness, but it seems like
Speaker 1: they were because the description of symptoms are similar. And
Speaker 1: maybe the biggest clue is that it was referred to
Speaker 1: as the English sweat or pseudor angelicus or the English
Speaker 1: bath or other names that clearly place its origin in England.
Speaker 2: Did they talk about how bad they lay stunk?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so perfect, Thank you for asking that I have
Speaker 1: a quote. In fifteen twenty nine, a terrible disease spread
Speaker 1: in the Lowlands at Cologne, Antwerp, Frankfurt, reaching as far
Speaker 1: as Strasbourg, so that in these places a great many
Speaker 1: people died. And they called this disease the English sweat
Speaker 1: because it came from England. And whoever was affected by
Speaker 1: this disease went from life to death in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: For when one was afflicted with the disease, it came
Speaker 1: with a great poisonous sweating, and one sweated to death forthwith,
Speaker 1: so that countless people died of the disease everywhere. Some
Speaker 1: people sat down to table in good health and were
Speaker 1: carried away dead.
Speaker 2: What erin?
Speaker 1: I know? Are you going to devote your the rest
Speaker 1: of your life to study the English sweating section?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it, that's my career, okay, For I feel likedicine.
Speaker 1: It's inevitable.
Speaker 2: It's sweating sickness all the time.
Speaker 1: And so after this fifteen twenty eight and fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine epidemic, which seems to be the only one that
Speaker 1: spread to content mental Europe, the sweating sickness made only
Speaker 1: one more appearance in fifteen fifty one, again in England.
Speaker 2: And this a long time later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about the intervals. So keyes describes
Speaker 1: this last epidemic as beginning in April in fifteen fifty
Speaker 1: one and spreading over the country over the next few
Speaker 1: months before dying out in September. London's death toll peaked
Speaker 1: at over seven hundred people in a week in the
Speaker 1: middle of July, and some towns reportedly lost half of
Speaker 1: their population. After fifteen fifty one, sweating sickness seems to
Speaker 1: have just like dropped off the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: Entirely isolated cases of a similar disease may have shown
Speaker 1: up in parts of Germany, France, northern Spain, northern Italy
Speaker 1: and Holland over the next couple hundred years, but no
Speaker 1: large epidemics, and these isolated cases aren't often mentioned in
Speaker 1: histories of sweating sickness. What is commonly mentioned, however, is
Speaker 1: Piccardi sweat I'm hoping I'm saying that right, another infectious
Speaker 1: disease of unknown cause that first emerged in seventeen eighteen
Speaker 1: in northern France and later spread to Germany, Austria, Belgium,
Speaker 1: Switzerland and Italy. And the last extensive outbreak of this
Speaker 1: disease occurred in nineteen oh six in France, and there
Speaker 1: were so there seems to be two forms of the
Speaker 1: Picardy sweat, one very mild resembling Nephropathia epidemica.
Speaker 2: Is that one of the hauntaviruses, uh huh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: And another more severe version that more closely resembled the
Speaker 1: sweating sickness but was still much more mild. There were
Speaker 1: also some like fairly substantial differences between the two diseases
Speaker 1: in terms of their symptoms. So, for instance, the Piccardi
Speaker 1: sweat was often accompanied by a rash and subsequent peeling
Speaker 1: of the skin, as well as noseblas, neither of which
Speaker 1: seemed to be symptoms of sweating sickness.
Speaker 2: But is it just because everyone died so quickly that
Speaker 2: they didn't show any other symptoms? That's I meaning, I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's possible. I don't know how quickly the rash
Speaker 1: came on, but definitely the more severe version of the
Speaker 1: Piccardi sweat does seem to be like extremely rapid onset. Okay,
Speaker 1: But the mortality rate of the Piccardi sweat ranged from
Speaker 1: like zero to twenty percent, while the sweating sickness was
Speaker 1: much much more fatal like estimates put it at thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty percent. Okay, So the two diseases probably weren't
Speaker 1: the same, but I think that they were probably or
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that they were probably linked,
Speaker 1: like may may have been caused by the same vector
Speaker 1: or reservoir, or may have similar ecological origins actually, like.
Speaker 2: A similar type of pathogen or something like that. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of ideas.
Speaker 1: Aaron, Yeah, I mean I don't know. So now at
Speaker 1: this point, it's like, is it time to go through?
Speaker 2: Can we love to?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Reiley would love to?
Speaker 1: So what are the things I even told you to research?
Speaker 1: Because I don't remember.
Speaker 2: There's several. It's actually fun because some of these things
Speaker 2: we've already covered, and some of them were going to cover.
Speaker 2: So you told me to research ergot relapsing fever, hauntavirus
Speaker 2: or a type of hantavirus, and anthrax, and then also
Speaker 2: peripherally influenza. But I feel like we can say it's
Speaker 2: not influenza.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason so I will say that, like
Speaker 1: I told you these before I really started doing extensive research,
Speaker 1: and this was I pulled those those wikipedias is from
Speaker 1: Wikipedia being r liked these are what scholars have put
Speaker 1: forth as possible explanations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's go through them. And I have a
Speaker 2: favorite already.
Speaker 1: Oh what's your favorite?
Speaker 2: Well, we'll go over it last. Okay, let's just take
Speaker 2: a quick break. I feel like we need to breathe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, and sweat.
Speaker 2: And sweat Okay, yeah, I have a favorite already, erin.
Speaker 2: But the thing is it's not perfect. I guess that's
Speaker 2: the point of a medical mystery, is like nothing really
Speaker 2: fits perfectly. Yeah, but based on the ones that you
Speaker 2: told me to look up because Wikipedia said, we can
Speaker 2: very quickly eliminate several of them and we can talk
Speaker 2: about why, and then we can go through the one
Speaker 2: that I think seems like the best option.
Speaker 1: Okay, perfect, Okay.
Speaker 2: So influenza. If you haven't listened to our very first
Speaker 2: episode of this entire podcast, you can learn all about
Speaker 2: influenza on that episode. But basically, this does not sound
Speaker 2: anything like influenza.
Speaker 1: It does not. And so that was one of like
Speaker 1: the that was one of the earliest explanations put forth,
Speaker 1: and I think that it was very popular and retained
Speaker 1: popularity for a while because the nineteen eighteen influenza had
Speaker 1: a similar like pattern in that it attacked who seemed
Speaker 1: to be like the youngest and healthiest with a real predominance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And certainly it's not out of the question
Speaker 2: that you would have a brand new strain of influenza,
Speaker 2: and it could be much more deadly like the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighteen pandemic. But otherwise symptoms wise, like this sudden onset
Speaker 2: of fever and fever being the one and only like
Speaker 2: major symptom that just doesn't really fit with what we
Speaker 2: see with influenza. Even if it's a different strain, like
Speaker 2: influenza is usually a slightly more gradual onset, You're definitely
Speaker 2: going to have some kind of respiratory symptoms a lot
Speaker 2: of times because it is a respiratory pathogen, and usually
Speaker 2: when we see the more severe forms, it's because it's
Speaker 2: causing like a viral pneumonia rather than just you know,
Speaker 2: sweating and then dying. Right, So I think we can
Speaker 2: pretty confidently say it's very unlikely that this was an influenza,
Speaker 2: especially an influenza strain that like remained localized to only
Speaker 2: England and then didn't spread to anywhere.
Speaker 1: Else, Right, what does that tell us about transmission or Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably wasn't respiratory.
Speaker 2: Okay, another one I think we can pretty quickly eliminate
Speaker 2: is actually going to be ergot, Yes, for sure. So
Speaker 2: ergot we talked a lot about in the Dancing Plague episode.
Speaker 2: This whole episode is actually just like see previous episodes.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, but we will.
Speaker 2: Go through it. So Ergot, a fungus, produces a number
Speaker 2: of different alkaloids, including ergotamine, which if you ingest or
Speaker 2: gotamine or any of these other alkaloids, that's when you
Speaker 2: get these type of symptoms. What I like about this
Speaker 2: as an explanation is that ergot is not an infectious disease, right.
Speaker 2: It's like you're ingesting this alkaloid produced by this fungus,
Speaker 2: and so the onset can be really rapid. And from
Speaker 2: what you're saying, the onset of this is so rapid
Speaker 2: that it's it's hard to believe this is an infectious
Speaker 2: disease because it's so very rapid like that.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, and it also affected like members of a household, Okay,
Speaker 1: in clusters.
Speaker 2: Right, so I could see that as well.
Speaker 1: Right, But there are a lot of things against ergot too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, for example, the symptoms are nothing.
Speaker 1: Like correct that would be the number one thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the signs and symptoms of ergot generally how
Speaker 2: to do with Like it causes vasoconstriction, So depending on
Speaker 2: where that vasoconstriction is, you're either going to have like
Speaker 2: tissue death and limbs falling off, or you have like
Speaker 2: a convulsive form where it's affecting your central nervous system,
Speaker 2: so you have like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, all kinds
Speaker 2: of weird sensations, but nothing like this super high fever sweating,
Speaker 2: Like that's just not something that you really see. Certainly
Speaker 2: hallucinations and delirium like you were talking about, but because
Speaker 2: of the ergotomy, not because of the fever and sweat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think maybe not ergot, but a food born
Speaker 1: type of thing. Ye was also like, I know botulism
Speaker 1: was briefly proposed at some point, but I don't that
Speaker 1: again doesn't fit.
Speaker 2: It doesn't fit. Yeah, symptoms wise, it doesn't fit. I
Speaker 2: agree that like cluster wise in a household and onset wise,
Speaker 2: some kind of pre formed toxin or a food borne something.
Speaker 2: I could see that fitting with some of the epidemiological characteristics,
Speaker 2: but there aren't a ton of those I mean there
Speaker 2: are some that cause fever, but really actually no, they're
Speaker 2: not a ton that really caused this kind of fever
Speaker 2: that you would see because fever is indicative of inflammation,
Speaker 2: which is something that we see more with you know, infection,
Speaker 2: rather than I don't know right well.
Speaker 1: And I think there's also the matter and I kind
Speaker 1: of I mean, I definitely have withheld some key points.
Speaker 2: Oh great things a lot, Aaron.
Speaker 1: I just think that it would be I think that
Speaker 1: we can back and forth this so like so like
Speaker 1: when we're talking about how sweating sickness seemed to be spread,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really fit food board pathogen. It does seem
Speaker 1: to have traveled along roads, so like if it took
Speaker 1: fifteen days to travel between one village and another, that
Speaker 1: is often the interval that was seen, the interval between
Speaker 1: outbreaks in particular villages or towns, And that bit of
Speaker 1: information I think is really interesting because it points towards
Speaker 1: human to human transmission. But the pattern geographically of epidemics
Speaker 1: is that rural areas seem to be hit hard and
Speaker 1: cities maybe not as hard as you might expect if
Speaker 1: it were something like a crowd disease or a transmitted
Speaker 1: person to person. So what it seems to be is
Speaker 1: that there was another source of infection, but that human
Speaker 1: to human was also possible.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So another one that you had me research
Speaker 2: that I don't think that it is, even though I
Speaker 2: do think there are a number of things that I
Speaker 2: understand why this is a common proposition is hauntavirus. Ooh, see,
Speaker 2: your face tells me that you think countavirus is the
Speaker 2: best fit.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean you're withholding a lot of information, so
Speaker 2: maybe that information is going to tell me that I agree.
Speaker 2: But I actually this is a spoiler, but I think
Speaker 2: relapsing fever fits really well.
Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, and there's a few.
Speaker 2: Reasons why I think that could be the case, even
Speaker 2: though there are some symptoms that don't really fit relapsing fever.
Speaker 2: But okay, so let's go through hantavirus then, or do
Speaker 2: you want to go through anthrax because I don't think
Speaker 2: it's anthrax.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's anthax either.
Speaker 2: Okay, So do we want to talk about why or
Speaker 2: should we just wait until we do anthrax as an episode?
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about why just briefly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So anthrax is a disease caused by a bacterium
Speaker 2: kind of called Bacillus anthrasis. This is a gram positive,
Speaker 2: aerobic spore forming bacterium. So that is important because what
Speaker 2: it means is that when this bacteria senses a change
Speaker 2: in their environment such that it becomes unfavorable, like a
Speaker 2: low neutrient environment, they form this spore which is very
Speaker 2: environmentally hardy, much like Claustridium species do, like we talked
Speaker 2: about in botulism, and so it can survive in the
Speaker 2: soil for years. So anthrax is kind of global in distribution,
Speaker 2: like this bacteria lives and this spore can persist in
Speaker 2: the soil for like decades potentially. But what happens is
Speaker 2: if you get exposed to the spores in a couple
Speaker 2: of different ways, either through your skin like a break
Speaker 2: in your skin, or through your gastrointestinal tract, or the
Speaker 2: worst form is if you inhale the spores. What happens
Speaker 2: is those spores get engulfed by our macrophages, which are
Speaker 2: white blood cells, and then within our white blood cells
Speaker 2: as they travel like to our lymph nodes, they can
Speaker 2: like reactivate into the live bacteria and these bacteria produce
Speaker 2: a number of different exotoxins that cause a lot of problems.
Speaker 2: So I mean, and really none of the symptoms of
Speaker 2: cutaneous like which is skin, or gastrointestinal or inhalational anthrax,
Speaker 2: none of those symptom wise really fit with the description
Speaker 2: of the illness that you gave for sweating sickness. Certainly.
Speaker 2: One thing that does fit is that this is something that,
Speaker 2: like these spores could be transmitted on an animal. For example,
Speaker 2: it's very common for people who work with animals or
Speaker 2: livestock to become infected either with inhalational or gastrointestinal anthrax.
Speaker 2: So kind of the travel and like that kind of distribution.
Speaker 2: Maybe if you had anthrax in one area and then
Speaker 2: it moved, you know, with I don't know, livestock or
Speaker 2: something to another area, maybe you could see that. And also,
Speaker 2: inhalational anthrax is very deadly and very rapid. You start
Speaker 2: with like a pretty non specific fever, feeling cruddy, having
Speaker 2: muscle aches you especially because we're talking about inhalational here,
Speaker 2: you usually have a cough. Right, this is something that's
Speaker 2: causing inflammation in your lungs, so you might have abdominal pain,
Speaker 2: but also chest pain and then over a couple of days,
Speaker 2: you get a further fever, but also more shortness of breath,
Speaker 2: a lot of trouble breathing. This occurs over a couple
Speaker 2: of days, and then like at that point, especially if
Speaker 2: this crosses your blood brain barrier and causes meningitis, then
Speaker 2: very rapidly you progress to shock, hypothermia and death within
Speaker 2: like a number of hours, like twenty four hours or something.
Speaker 2: But that's after a few days of feeling cruddy and
Speaker 2: having a fever and that kind of thing. So that
Speaker 2: doesn't really fit. And then cutaneous and gastrointestinal wise, like
Speaker 2: absolutely doesn't fit well.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that like anthrax was known and
Speaker 1: is still like was around, it didn't disappear, whereas this
Speaker 1: really does seem to be this incredibly unique disease that
Speaker 1: then disappeared.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. That's why I can't there I'm gonna make
Speaker 2: an argument still for relapsing fever.
Speaker 1: No, that's totally fine. I'm curious because this is the
Speaker 1: thing is that like maybe I feel like I'm leaning
Speaker 1: more towards hantavirus A because of the papers I've read,
Speaker 1: but be because I already know more about hauntavirus. I
Speaker 1: don't know really anything about relapsing fever except it's transmission route.
Speaker 2: Right well, And I mean i'd like I dove into
Speaker 2: all of these, but I don't think I dove as
Speaker 2: deeply as I would have if we were doing a
Speaker 2: full length episode on it. So I also feel like
Speaker 2: I don't know everything there is to know about relapsing fever,
Speaker 2: and I definitely feel like I know more about hantavirus.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, okay, let's talk about hantavirus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So if you want even more deep dive on hantavirus,
Speaker 2: it's all the way back in season two. We did
Speaker 2: a whole episode on it. But there's a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of different hauntaviruses. They all are RNA viruses. They're commonly
Speaker 2: found in rodent and moles and shrews. That was Aaron
Speaker 2: hauntavirus was the episode when I learned that moles and
Speaker 2: shrews are not rodents.
Speaker 1: I think I just relearned that when you said that.
Speaker 2: The most deadly of hantaviruses is the synombree virus, which
Speaker 2: causes hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which has the highest case fatality
Speaker 2: rate of like forty to fifty percent. But there are
Speaker 2: a number of other hantaviruses that we know of, including
Speaker 2: soul virus, hantan virus, Pumla virus, and Dobrava virus, which
Speaker 2: tend to cause a disease that we call heemorrhagic fever
Speaker 2: with renal syndrome. So if we're talking about like hantavirus
Speaker 2: pulmonary syndrome, you definitely get fever, you definitely get muscle aches,
Speaker 2: headache is certainly one of those symptoms, abdominal pain, diarrhea maybe,
Speaker 2: And importantly, you don't have those upper respiratory symptoms, which
Speaker 2: is in because even though this is a pulmonary illness,
Speaker 2: at the first part of this disease, you don't really
Speaker 2: have any kind of pulmonary like lung symptoms. But this
Speaker 2: is a long like it's a longer disease, like the
Speaker 2: first phase usually lasts three to five days, but even
Speaker 2: up to two weeks. And then after that first phase
Speaker 2: where you're just kind of feeling cruddy, then you start
Speaker 2: to have these heart and lung symptoms, and within twenty
Speaker 2: four to forty eight hours of that is when you
Speaker 2: could die. But even still you have a longer period
Speaker 2: of feeling not good and having a fever and having
Speaker 2: all these other symptoms before you die.
Speaker 1: I don't know, erin okay, I feel like we have
Speaker 1: pretty successfully ruled out a few of them, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: and we are now left with like what we think
Speaker 1: and what has been commonly reported as like the two
Speaker 1: leading you propose explanations. What if you briefly laid out
Speaker 1: just the very basic characteristics of hantavirus, the hantavirus pulmonary
Speaker 1: syndrome and relapsing fever, just like how they're transmitted, you know,
Speaker 1: table form type stuff, and then I'll go through the
Speaker 1: epidemiological characteristics of sweating sickness, and we'll kind of talk
Speaker 1: about each point for each of them.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds fun, Okay, Okay, So focusing on hantavirus
Speaker 2: pulmonary syndrome, So hantavirus pulmonary syndrome has a case fatality
Speaker 2: rate about thirty thirty to fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: It does sound familiar. Relapsing fever, first of all, importantly,
Speaker 2: there are two different forms of relapsing fever. There's lousborn
Speaker 2: relapsing fever, and there's tickborn relapsing fever and They're very
Speaker 2: different in terms of their epidemiological characteristics, and I think
Speaker 2: this sounds much more like loosborn relapsing fever, which is
Speaker 2: more common in groups. It's more common in epidemics and
Speaker 2: has a case fatality rate of between ten to forty percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So hantavirus transmission. Hantavirus is transmitted by aerosolized mouse poop. Essentially,
Speaker 2: it's transmitted by aerosols, but not person to person.
Speaker 1: However, there is an asterisk next to that not transmitted
Speaker 1: person to person because there have been instances reported in
Speaker 1: Argentina that suggest person to person transmission since there.
Speaker 2: Is some possibility of at least one specific strain, but
Speaker 2: most hauntaviruses have not ever been shown to be able
Speaker 2: to be transmitted person to person. Now, what about relapsing fever.
Speaker 2: This is fun. First of all, relapsing fever is caused
Speaker 2: by Brellia species, so these are spirokeet bacteria not too
Speaker 2: distantly related to lyme disease, but different species. And there's
Speaker 2: a number of different species of Burrellia that can cause
Speaker 2: relapsing fever, which I think is important. And while tickborn
Speaker 2: relapsing fever is transmitted from the bite of a tick,
Speaker 2: much like many other tickborn diseases. Louse born relapsing fever
Speaker 2: is transmitted from the hemolymph, which is the blood of
Speaker 2: a louse. That means that if a louse is living
Speaker 2: on you and you know, biting you, and so you're itchy,
Speaker 2: and then you scratch you like smoosh that louse and
Speaker 2: then you scrape it open and you scrape their blood
Speaker 2: into your skin, that's how you become infected. And I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure that there have been some suggestion that there
Speaker 2: might be for LuSE born relapsing fever, that there could
Speaker 2: be person to person transmission based on eptymilogical characterism.
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, interesting, I.
Speaker 2: Got so excited that I couldn't finish that word. Some
Speaker 2: other characteristics. So incubation period I think is probably important because,
Speaker 2: like you said, if this was moving kind of like
Speaker 2: village to village or area to area in about the
Speaker 2: time it takes for someone to travel, then you're probably
Speaker 2: not looking at something that has a super long incubation period.
Speaker 2: So for hantavirus, it's actually quite a long incubation period.
Speaker 2: It's usually like two to three weeks incubation period after
Speaker 2: exposure to symptoms relapsing fever, there's a pretty big range.
Speaker 2: In general, it's about seven days, but it can be
Speaker 2: as low as four or as high as like eighteen, okay.
Speaker 2: And then duration of illness. And this is the part
Speaker 2: where honestly none of these fit really well, because with hantavirus,
Speaker 2: especially hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, you have a first phase of
Speaker 2: kind of fever, malaise, not feeling great, headache, and that
Speaker 2: usually lasts three to five days, but even up to
Speaker 2: like twelve days where you're just feeling bad. And then
Speaker 2: when you get to the second phase where you have
Speaker 2: shock and pulmonary edema, so like fluid in your lungs,
Speaker 2: that usually happens really quickly, within like twenty forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: and then you might die. But in general you're feeling
Speaker 2: creddy for at least three to five days before that. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: Now with relapsing fever, I mean you said this, sometimes
Speaker 2: people relapse saren So relapsing fever does start very abruptly
Speaker 2: with a very abrupt onset of a really really high
Speaker 2: fever along with shaking, chills, headache, and delirium. Interesting, and
Speaker 2: you often also have very severe joint pain, muscle aches,
Speaker 2: nausea and vomiting, and extreme weakness, like you can't even
Speaker 2: get up and walk because you're so weak and feel
Speaker 2: extremely lethargic. Okay, like you said, all you want to
Speaker 2: do is sleep. Yeah, and then you can also get
Speaker 2: like a very profound anorexia, feeling so bad like you
Speaker 2: just don't want to eat. You might have weight loss.
Speaker 2: But and this is where it just falls apart, Aaron.
Speaker 2: The first fever, this really high onset fever. Your skin
Speaker 2: is usually hot and dry. It's like a very classic description,
Speaker 2: It's a hot and dry Which the reason that this
Speaker 2: is like outlined in all of these clinical descriptions is
Speaker 2: because a lot of other diseases that cause a fever,
Speaker 2: especially a relapsing fever like malaria, you usually are sweating
Speaker 2: quite a lot in association with the fever, right, But
Speaker 2: with this one, your skin is described as hot and dry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that does not sound.
Speaker 2: Like sweating, but it also doesn't I mean, hanta doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like that either.
Speaker 1: So I have a question about relapsing fevers. Okay, how
Speaker 1: diverse is this group or, like, you know, how many
Speaker 1: different bacterial species cause relapsing fever, and how much variety
Speaker 1: in symptoms is there among those species.
Speaker 2: Very good question. So there's I saw, and I didn't
Speaker 2: write down every single species, but loos born relapsing fever
Speaker 2: is mostly one species, and that's Burrellia recurrensis. Okay, but
Speaker 2: there are at least like three or four other species
Speaker 2: of Burrellia that cause tickborn relapsing fever. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 2: a number of different tick species that also can transmit
Speaker 2: so hard ticks and soft.
Speaker 1: Ticks, okay, which is fun. It is fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know we never talk about soft ticks, but
Speaker 2: they do. So tickborn and louis born relapsing fever look
Speaker 2: a little bit different. So like the length of illness
Speaker 2: is different, the mortality rate is different. Tickborn relapsing fever
Speaker 2: is not as deadly as lousborn relapsing fever. Loosbourne usually
Speaker 2: lasts a little bit longer, like five and a half
Speaker 2: days of symptoms rather than three days. And then the
Speaker 2: interval between relapses is also longer for loosborn relapsing fever,
Speaker 2: and you generally have fewer relapses. You have like maybe
Speaker 2: one maybe two relapse. But with tickborn relapsing fever. You
Speaker 2: often have like three or more relapses of symptoms. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 2: now you do often have a rash. It's not uncommon.
Speaker 2: But and this is why I mentioned that in the
Speaker 2: French epidemic where people did have a rash, the rash
Speaker 2: can look a lot of different ways, Like there's a
Speaker 2: lot of different kind of presentations of a rash, but
Speaker 2: it usually happens after the first set of symptoms while
Speaker 2: you're otherwise asymptomatic. So if people survived long enough to
Speaker 2: get to that point, maybe they would have had a rash.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, but.
Speaker 2: This is getting off of the epic characteristics a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I want to get into the path of physiology
Speaker 2: of how relapsing fever works because this is part of
Speaker 2: what makes me think that maybe it was like a
Speaker 2: certain subtype of Burrellia that caused these particular epidemics. Because
Speaker 2: what I think is really interesting is like what causes
Speaker 2: this relapsing disease? Right, The reason that you have a
Speaker 2: relapsing fever and symptoms in tickborn or lousborn relapsing fever
Speaker 2: is that the bacteria that caused this ary their surface antigens,
Speaker 2: so they change out those proteins that are on their
Speaker 2: surface that our body is responding to in order to
Speaker 2: kill them, and they do so during cycles of disease.
Speaker 2: They change them so well that so you get infected. Right,
Speaker 2: the bacteria enter your bloodstream, either by use scratching them
Speaker 2: in or by a tick spitting them into your bloodstream.
Speaker 2: They replicate. Our body reacts, which is why you have
Speaker 2: all these symptoms, fever, feeling crappy, and then our immune
Speaker 2: system tries to kill them off, but the bacteria go, Okay,
Speaker 2: well you figured out this antigen so we'll just change
Speaker 2: our outer proteins and then our bodies like, oh we
Speaker 2: did it. These bacteria are gone and they don't recognize
Speaker 2: these anymore, so then they can start to replicate all
Speaker 2: over again. You have a huge amount of bacteria in
Speaker 2: your blood again, and it's like a whole new infection.
Speaker 1: That is unbelievably cool. I am very that is fascinating.
Speaker 2: It's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so I wonder could it be that there was,
Speaker 2: you know, a particular antigenic subtype that was present in
Speaker 2: England at this time that happened to cause a slightly
Speaker 2: different presentation of this disease. I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: don't know here, I know, I know, I know, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I have a few more questions about like the
Speaker 1: epicharacteristics of relapsing fever and hantavirus or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, is there any general pattern in who,
Speaker 1: like whether it's age group or whatever that is most
Speaker 1: susceptible or seems to have the most outcomes with either
Speaker 1: of these.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, at least nothing that stands out
Speaker 2: in the research that I did. It's not like young
Speaker 2: people only die from this or old people only die from.
Speaker 1: This, Okay. And then what about like any seasonal or
Speaker 1: temporal aspect.
Speaker 2: So with tickborn relapsing fever, it certainly is something that's
Speaker 2: going to be more common when people are outside and
Speaker 2: when ticks are outside, which is going to be in
Speaker 2: the summer months, laoisborne, it tends to be a more
Speaker 2: epidemic disease. It doesn't tend to be sporadic the way
Speaker 2: that tickborn relapsing fever does. But these are human body lice,
Speaker 2: and so there doesn't tend to be like a specific
Speaker 2: seasonal variation necessarily because human body lice live on us
Speaker 2: all of the time. With hantavirus, I think I remember
Speaker 2: it being something where it's just depends on when you're
Speaker 2: in contact with mice.
Speaker 1: Well, for hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, it was summer summer.
Speaker 2: That makes sense because that's when you're in contact with mice.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, one final question okay, immunity. Do you gain
Speaker 1: immunity after infection?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: And are there asymptomatic infections?
Speaker 2: Really good question erin I'm going to guess with relapsing fever, no,
Speaker 2: you don't gain immunity because already they're changing up their
Speaker 2: intigens so much that that's why you're having relapses to
Speaker 2: begin with. For hantavirus, there is a vaccine that's available,
Speaker 2: at least in some parts of the world, so I
Speaker 2: would think that there's immunity for at least some portion
Speaker 2: of time. Not sure how long that immunity would last.
Speaker 1: Ok Okay. So I feel like now that we know
Speaker 1: a bit more about the two leading you know, potential causes,
Speaker 1: let's go over the EPI characteristics of sweating sickness. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break first. All right, So I've
Speaker 1: grouped the epi characteristics into five basic sections. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you know what was sweating sickness, so like symptoms, case fatality, right,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Number two, how it seemed to spread, number
Speaker 1: three where it occurred, Number four who had affect it,
Speaker 1: and number five when it happened. Okay, Okay, So starting
Speaker 1: with what it was, it was rapid onset fatal disease
Speaker 1: characterized by excessive foul smelling, sweating, fever, body aches and pain,
Speaker 1: stomach pains, headache and delirium, heart palpitations, and breathing that
Speaker 1: was shallow and labored. Death often occurred within the first
Speaker 1: few hours of the first symptoms showing up, and case
Speaker 1: fatality rates very among epidemics and affected regions. So like,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was seemed to be very low, sometimes it
Speaker 1: was really high, but overall it does seem that it
Speaker 1: was a very high mortality rate, and most estimates put
Speaker 1: it at like thirty to fifty percent.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The only epidemic where mortality could actually be somewhat reliably
Speaker 1: calculated was the fifteen fifty one one. And because that's
Speaker 1: because like, by that point but not for the previous epidemics,
Speaker 1: pair registers actually began to be in use, and so
Speaker 1: we get an estimate from some guy's amazing analysis of
Speaker 1: parish registers that around fifteen thousand deaths were due to
Speaker 1: sweating sickness from in the fifteen fifty one epidemic in England. Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's compare that to thirty thousand deaths from the
Speaker 1: plague in fifteen sixty three in a plague epidemic year,
Speaker 1: and one hundred and eighty thousand deaths from influenza epidemics
Speaker 1: in fifteen fifty seven, fifteen fifty eight, and fifteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: So although it was deadly, it wasn't nearly didn't cause
Speaker 1: nearly the same loss of life as some of these
Speaker 1: other diseases. Yeah, okay, all right. Number two, how it spread?
Speaker 1: And we talked a little bit about this, but this
Speaker 1: is very challenging to nail down. So basically, it does
Speaker 1: seem that human to human transmission was possible, but that
Speaker 1: that may not be the only route through which a
Speaker 1: pathogen was transmitted.
Speaker 2: See this is why I lean Lausborn because like lice,
Speaker 2: move from person to person and thereby move the disease. Right,
Speaker 2: So it's not directly person to person, but it is
Speaker 2: person to person in that sense. Right, It's not, it's
Speaker 2: not it doesn't need an animal reservoir. It's it's a
Speaker 2: human disease.
Speaker 1: It doesn't, right. But I think what makes me lean
Speaker 1: away from Laos are a number of things, Like one
Speaker 1: is the seasonality, which was very pronounced, like it was
Speaker 1: summer months and then it emerged suddenly, disappeared suddenly, So
Speaker 1: that to me implies some sort of like ecological characteristic
Speaker 1: of this disease. And the second thing is and I
Speaker 1: didn't really go that into it yet, and I will
Speaker 1: right now. I'll skip ahead to number four is who
Speaker 1: it affected? So who sweating sickness mostly affected? And so
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it seemed to primarily impact
Speaker 1: England only even respecting political boundaries. And I don't really
Speaker 1: know what to make of that, Like maybe contemporary writers
Speaker 1: were just being a bit dramatic and wanting to play
Speaker 1: up the role of England as a victim, or maybe
Speaker 1: it was real, in which case I wonder if there
Speaker 1: was some sort of like cultural or behavioral difference that
Speaker 1: prevented it spread. So like maybe one type of grain
Speaker 1: was more commonly grown and stored in England, thus providing
Speaker 1: more food for rodents, or maybe it was stored in
Speaker 1: a particular way or a certain place that would have
Speaker 1: changed how rodents and humans or arthropod vectors and humans
Speaker 1: interacted with one another. And while some of the names
Speaker 1: for the disease highlight how sweating sickness seemed to be
Speaker 1: an English thing, so like pseudor angelicus the English sweat,
Speaker 1: others seemed to raw attention to the type or class
Speaker 1: of person that was commonly affected, So stoop gallant, stoop
Speaker 1: nave and no thay master, which is like, basically it
Speaker 1: seemed to affect wealthy, well to do healthy young men,
Speaker 1: primarily so between the ages of like fifteen and forty.
Speaker 2: And that would lean kind of away from a lousporn
Speaker 2: just because lice usually it's in more crowded conditions, more
Speaker 2: lower cysio economic status, when you don't have access to
Speaker 2: able to clean yourself and get rid of lice.
Speaker 1: Right, And I talked a bit about the urban to
Speaker 1: rural difference as well, where it did seem to be
Speaker 1: predomint like would hit hard rural areas, but it also
Speaker 1: was in urban areas as well, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: not to the same degree as it was maybe in
Speaker 1: rural areas, okay, And so then the final thing is
Speaker 1: when it happened. And by this I mean two things.
Speaker 1: So one is this very sporadic nature of the epidemics.
Speaker 1: So these like the years separating them are twenty three,
Speaker 1: nine eleven, and again twenty three.
Speaker 2: So that's weird.
Speaker 1: It's very strange, you could say. So some people suggest
Speaker 1: that it's an eleven year a ten year gap, and
Speaker 1: that there are just two missing epidemics. Whether they're missing
Speaker 1: to our knowledge or missing to like whether they actually
Speaker 1: happened or not, it's not known. But there's also this
Speaker 1: very strong seasonal pattern to infection. And if we're going
Speaker 1: along with the hauntavirus thing, some current or modern scholars
Speaker 1: suggest that there were wet years that preceded these epidemics,
Speaker 1: were very wet summers, which is what happened in the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three four Corners in Nombree outbreak that led
Speaker 1: to like a much higher mouse population, right exactly. But
Speaker 1: I think that like, I don't know, I mean, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about louseborn relapsing fever and we're talking about
Speaker 1: hauntavirus pulmonary syndrome, those are two very different roots of transmission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's one, and also exposure patterns.
Speaker 1: So like in putting together these pieces, you have the
Speaker 1: strong seasonality, which puts it more in the column of
Speaker 1: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which is when like you would have
Speaker 1: very distinct times of year during which you would be
Speaker 1: in contact with rodents.
Speaker 2: And certain years where you're certainly going to have a
Speaker 2: higher risk of transmission because of ecological factors.
Speaker 1: Definitely, right, exactly, And you also have this urban to
Speaker 1: rural variation and infection that does not seem to be
Speaker 1: mediated by like other roots of transmission. I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the symptoms are a whole nother thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where for me it falls apart. Like
Speaker 2: for me, the symptoms really do not sound like.
Speaker 1: HPS like the I mean, well, but here's here's something
Speaker 1: that I mean, obviously I have a little like you know,
Speaker 1: pet pet theory. Yeah, it's not my theory at all.
Speaker 1: I found it in papers. But before the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three four Corners outbreak of se nombervirus, we didn't have like,
Speaker 1: we didn't know about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. We didn't know
Speaker 1: that that's how it could manifest in your body, and
Speaker 1: then you know, they do in the descriptions of sweating sickness,
Speaker 1: they talk about how, oh, you were well at luncheon
Speaker 1: or you sat down to dinner and then you were
Speaker 1: carried off, like.
Speaker 2: Right, And I do wonder like, because you also have
Speaker 2: to take into account that this was like the late
Speaker 2: fourteen and early fifteen hundreds, their definition of someone who's
Speaker 2: well might not be the same as our definition of
Speaker 2: someone who's well, so they might actually be kind of miserable,
Speaker 2: but like that's normal for them, right right, So then yeah,
Speaker 2: so then maybe it does seem as though you were
Speaker 2: fine and now you're dead when really like they've been
Speaker 2: feeling cruddy for a couple of days, but they you know,
Speaker 2: they just thought that they didn't get enough sleep, or
Speaker 2: they're always kind of feeling cruddy, whatever it is. So
Speaker 2: in that case, you do have very rapid death once
Speaker 2: you hit that particular phase of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and
Speaker 2: even with you know, the other hauntaviruses that are a
Speaker 2: lot less deadly that now circulate in Europe and other
Speaker 2: parts of the world, when you do die from those,
Speaker 2: you die pretty rapidly, right, it's either like you recover
Speaker 2: over a very long period of time or you die
Speaker 2: pretty dang quick. So so yeah, I guess that does
Speaker 2: there are things that fit.
Speaker 3: It's just.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think, like I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this, this is like an episode
Speaker 1: of Unsolved Mysteries. I hope you go into it.
Speaker 2: And it's just it's also so bizarre that that it
Speaker 2: would be only in England, even if it was a hauntavirus,
Speaker 2: because whatever mice populations or whatever that would be high
Speaker 2: in England, like, why wouldn't they also be high in
Speaker 2: Scotland and Wales. I don't think that the ecology is
Speaker 2: I don't know ecology all that well, but I would
Speaker 2: assume that there are a lot of similar rodent species.
Speaker 1: Right in those areas. Yeah, definitely, and I think there
Speaker 1: were people have looked in the in like writings of
Speaker 1: the time and found no evidence or nothing to suggest
Speaker 1: that there were massive either population booms or massive die
Speaker 1: offs of rodents, like anything unusual about rodent populations. But
Speaker 1: that's where I was wondering whether grain was stored in
Speaker 1: a different way or in a different location in the
Speaker 1: house in England. I mean there's also like there could
Speaker 1: be a wet summer in certain parts of England and
Speaker 1: it could have missed Wales or Scotland entirely. And also
Speaker 1: how much of that is just a little bit of like,
Speaker 1: oh the English are being punished for our support of
Speaker 1: Henry the seventh or something. Yeah, So going over like
Speaker 1: what what do we know? What can we say about this?
Speaker 1: Do we think it was an infectious, contagious transmissible pathogen?
Speaker 2: Maybe?
Speaker 1: I think yes, based on the how it seemed to
Speaker 1: travel along roads or along like common roots, So.
Speaker 2: It seems more like an infectious and like there's some
Speaker 2: component of person to person.
Speaker 1: There's some component of person a person, but it's not
Speaker 1: driven by that. And there's a strong ecological component. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that points towards either arthropod or rodent, the two
Speaker 1: most likely I mean engineerian In all likelihood, this is
Speaker 1: something that we don't have anymore like why did it disappear?
Speaker 1: No idea which.
Speaker 2: Is even more fascinating, like if this was a virus,
Speaker 2: whether a haunted virus or some other virus or a
Speaker 2: bacteria that caused these specific outbreaks across an entire country.
Speaker 1: And then disappeared, Yeah, where did it go well, unless
Speaker 1: it unless it didn't unless it really was the piccardy sweat,
Speaker 1: which but what's that they don't know, right.
Speaker 2: So then where did it go? It caused one.
Speaker 1: Outbreak nosed, it caused outbreaks starting from seventeen eighteen all
Speaker 1: the way through nineteen o six was the last outbreak.
Speaker 1: The last diagnosed case was in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: That's even weirder arian.
Speaker 1: Is What is the case though, is that most people
Speaker 1: seem to believe that piccardy sweat and sweating sickness were
Speaker 1: different diseases. It didn't like sweating sickness didn't turn into
Speaker 1: piccardi sweat, but that they were probably caused by the
Speaker 1: same thing, whether that was like a rodent, a rodent reservoir,
Speaker 1: some sort of arthropod transmitted virus, or like relapsing fever
Speaker 1: where there is no rodent reservoir.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Yeah, and there's still like there's still no consensus.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: There's still no consensus if you look at the at
Speaker 1: the evolution of thought as to what caused sweating sickness.
Speaker 1: It started out started out influenza and relapsing fever, and
Speaker 1: then it kind of morphed into some sort of arbovirus
Speaker 1: so virus transmitted by an arthropod, But that was kind
Speaker 1: of discarded even by the authors themselves because they were like,
Speaker 1: we don't see any bites or rashes like that would
Speaker 1: have been noted. They feel like it would have been noted.
Speaker 1: And then following the nineteen ninety three four Corners Sonombrite outbreak,
Speaker 1: that is when hantavirus, pulmonary syndrome became the leading cause.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, even though there's still no pulmonary symptoms.
Speaker 1: I mean they I guess that what they view as
Speaker 1: pulmonary symptoms are the like shallow breathing, difficulty shallow breathing,
Speaker 1: and the heaviness on the chest.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But you know, I think that it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think about why do we care about this still? Like
Speaker 1: why are we still talking about it?
Speaker 2: Well? I feel like do we have to explain the
Speaker 2: answer to that question when we're living through a pandemic
Speaker 2: of a brand new virus?
Speaker 1: I yeah, exactly exactly, But I think like it is,
Speaker 1: this is such a bizarre and terrifying and fascinating illness,
Speaker 1: sweating sickness in these diseases that we think could be
Speaker 1: related to it, that exists today, like they're still around.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that there's the potential for something like
Speaker 1: this to happen again?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Really, I mean yeah, I think I think it all
Speaker 1: boils down to the fact that like understanding the nature
Speaker 1: and the cause of epidemics, whether they're present or especially
Speaker 1: those in the past, can help us just prevent future
Speaker 1: ones from happening.
Speaker 2: So right, and trying to understand too, like, like I
Speaker 2: think we went through like the ecological characteristics of this
Speaker 2: disease as well as the you know, temporal characteristics and
Speaker 2: the epimialological Like understanding all these different facets can really
Speaker 2: help you to narrow in on what you think might
Speaker 2: be the cause.
Speaker 1: You can't just compare symptoms, right, you have to consider
Speaker 1: the context.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I don't know, sweating sickness. It
Speaker 1: was a deadly, mysterious, probably infectious, contagious disease with an
Speaker 1: equal component fascinating.
Speaker 2: Aron. I learned so much. I mean I also learned nothing,
Speaker 2: but I learned so much.
Speaker 1: I know, I know it's interesting if anyone has any
Speaker 1: other thoughts on what it could have been or wants
Speaker 1: to vote for their favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I really really felt like I wanted
Speaker 2: for it to be relapsing fever, but I agree ecologically
Speaker 2: it just doesn't quite fit. And even symptoms wise, it
Speaker 2: doesn't quite fit. You know, none of these symptoms wise
Speaker 2: really quite fit perfectly. M hmm, because obviously if they did,
Speaker 2: then we'd have an answer. But some kind of haunted virus,
Speaker 2: I mean, I could see it. I understand that argument. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we may never know, we may never know, but I
Speaker 2: think I could live with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Okay, Well there you have it. Everyone, There
Speaker 1: you go. We could both be okay with it being
Speaker 1: hauntavirus some kind.
Speaker 2: Well, all right, then I bet you have a ton
Speaker 2: of sources.
Speaker 1: Do a lot of sources, Okay, So I'll call out
Speaker 1: a few of them. One by Eric Bridson from two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, and that was the first one to
Speaker 1: propose hauntavirus pulmonary syndrome as the cause of the English sweat.
Speaker 1: Then there was another incredible paper from nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: by Alan Dyer called the English Sweating Sickness of fifteen
Speaker 1: fifty one and Epidemic Anatomized. And then there were some
Speaker 1: other pretty good ones. So I read one by Flood
Speaker 1: from two thousand and three, safer on the battlefield than
Speaker 1: in the city and by taverner at all from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight the English sweating sickness a viral pulmonary disease.
Speaker 2: Awesome. If you'd like to do a deeper dive on
Speaker 2: any of the illnesses that we talked about on this podcast,
Speaker 2: I will have sources from previous episodes as well as
Speaker 2: a few more for diseases that we haven't touched on yet.
Speaker 2: And you can find the sources from every single one
Speaker 2: of our episodes on this podcast will kill You dot
Speaker 2: com under the episodes tab.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the
Speaker 1: music for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you to the Exactly Right Network, of which we
Speaker 2: are proud to be a part.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, and thank you to you listeners for listening.
Speaker 1: We hope that you don't hate this unsatisfying episode.
Speaker 2: I hope that you had fun. I had fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a lot of fun. And if you
Speaker 1: have any ideas as to what it could be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let us know. Or if you have other medical
Speaker 2: mysteries you'd like for us to not be able to solve.
Speaker 1: Ooh yes, okay, Well until next time, Wash your hands.
Speaker 2: You filthy animals.
Speaker 3: Ob bonba bonbu ombo oh