Vulgar History - Pandemic Special： Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the English sweating sickness

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to a pandemic super special mini episode of the Vulgar History Podcast.

00:00:06.180 My name is Anne Foster, and in these little interstitial podcasts, I'm looking at some

00:00:12.420 interesting pandemic-related stories from history.

00:00:16.980 I find it interesting, sort of, to put everything that we're experiencing now vis-a-vis COVID-19

00:00:25.220 into perspective by looking at other pandemics that have happened in the past and just kind of

00:00:30.820 seeing what what that was like for people and how how life went on how even in the middle of all

00:00:36.640 these horrible gruesome things happening there is still um people having their little scandalous

00:00:41.940 lives and and things happening it didn't stop the world uh today this is a topic that i was asking

00:00:49.660 on instagram where you can follow this little podcast on instagram it's instagram vulgar history

00:00:55.040 pod um I've been getting some ideas for many episodes from there and this is one that came up

00:01:00.680 last time I asked um which is the sweating sickness and the the sweating sickness in Anne

00:01:07.060 Boleyn um and my arch nemesis Henry VIII and I haven't gotten into this in the podcast before

00:01:12.160 because I haven't talked about anyone around him really thus far in vulgar history but just

00:01:19.060 basically I'm just over Henry VIII I there's so many biographies about him there's so many

00:01:24.980 documentaries about him like lots of people have studied him and of course because he lived a long

00:01:29.640 time did a bunch of stuff that was significant but i'm just like that's been done i've i've read

00:01:36.200 about him to me the most interesting thing about henry the eighth is the women who are around him

00:01:40.660 his um mother his grandmothers his daughters his various wives he's sort of the um the common

00:01:48.540 element in a bunch of stories that i do find interesting but the thing is he turns up being

00:01:52.420 the villain in most of those stories. But in today's story, and I'm going to present this in

00:01:58.420 an objective type way, he's actually the smartest one around. He actually behaves in an okay

00:02:06.220 manner that's sort of admirable, which is, you know, no one, no one is all great or all horrible.

00:02:14.400 And this is a story about him being not the worst, which is very uncomfortable for me to be saying,

00:02:20.140 but this is uh you know on instagram this was a suggestion it's a really interesting story and

00:02:25.720 i'm just gonna be professional about it and forget about what henry the eighth would later do

00:02:31.220 um for the rest of his life and just focus on this sweating sickness type situation where he

00:02:36.460 handled it all very well so i'm gonna put the sources for that i used to put this together

00:02:41.940 in the show notes but just so you know i got some information from an article by joel shurkin from

00:02:48.380 discover magazine um as well as from a blog post from on the tutor trail which is a great blog that

00:02:54.840 talks about this whole era uh history.com history extra bbc history is extra which is a great um

00:03:02.300 website slash magazine slash podcast uh there was an article written by tracy boorman who's written

00:03:06.860 a ton of really great non-fiction books about english british history so she wrote an article

00:03:12.960 about henry the eighth and the sweating sickness for bbc history extra i'll put all those links

00:03:17.800 up if you want to like read up on all of this stuff later but basically the first time i ever

00:03:23.840 heard of the sweating sickness was when i was watching the tutors i feel like season one and

00:03:28.700 everyone just started talking about the sweating sickness and even just the name of it like the

00:03:32.860 sweating sickness sounds so vague and just sort of dramatic and odd so it stuck with me and that

00:03:39.320 was also a great episode of a show that had that i enjoyed a lot of that show mostly the natalie

00:03:45.340 Dormer parts. And this was a great Natalie Dormer episode where basically the story I'm going to

00:03:49.540 tell you was the episode of the Tudors. Um, and let's get into it. So sweating sickness,

00:03:56.120 AKA English sweating sickness, you know, in that way that, um, diseases get named after the place

00:04:02.100 where you find them. So the English sweating sickness, AKA the English sweat, um, the Latin

00:04:09.600 name of it is pseudor anglicus which is latin for english sweat uh was a mysterious and contagious

00:04:16.200 disease that struck england and then later continental europe in a series of epidemics

00:04:21.280 beginning in 1485 the last outbreak occurred in 1551 so it was just kind of like 1485 to 1551 it

00:04:29.060 was just a disease that everyone dreaded and knew about and then it just stopped so the disease

00:04:34.260 apparently vanished uh the let's talk about the disease itself the onset of symptoms was sudden

00:04:40.280 with death often occurring within hours uh the cause remains unknown but we'll get to some

00:04:47.440 possible reasons of what caused it so unlike most diseases it uh it didn't um you know there's a lot

00:04:54.220 of diseases plague etc covid19 where people with pre-existing conditions are can sometimes seem to

00:05:01.380 be more susceptible uh but with the sweating sickness it seemed to attack the young healthy

00:05:06.480 and rich it was like the sexier you were the more at risk you were seemingly uh so like other

00:05:13.280 diseases eg the plague um really affected the poor people as well just because of people um less

00:05:21.140 hygienic conditions you're living and more people smooshed up together that sort of thing but this

00:05:25.320 is like rich healthy people were getting it and so that was very disturbing to the rich and healthy

00:05:30.520 so the symptoms are wild the very first symptom is just a sense of apprehension where you just

00:05:36.600 feel like oh my god i think i have the sweating sickness i guess like your first that's the first

00:05:41.320 symptom is just a feeling of apprehension followed by cold shivers which might be very violent

00:05:47.280 giddiness headache and severe pains in the neck shoulders and limbs along with great exhaustion

00:05:53.820 so the cold shivers stage might last from half an hour to three hours after which the hot and

00:05:58.780 sweating stage began so again this is like you could catch it before dinner and be dead by the

00:06:03.280 time you go to bed super quick um the characteristic sweat that it was named after broke out suddenly

00:06:08.420 without any obvious cause um when you get the sweat part you also have a sense of heat headache

00:06:13.680 delirium a rapid pulse and intense thirst uh palpitation and pain in the heart also came along

00:06:20.180 with this stage there were no skin eruptions um noted and so the final stage is exhaustion which

00:06:26.460 has basically collapsed so just this irresistible urge to go to sleep and this was fatal if the

00:06:31.400 patient were permitted to give way to it so it's like in movies and tv shows and stuff you know

00:06:36.000 where people have a concussion it's like you have to watch them to make sure they don't go to sleep

00:06:40.000 this is like if you have sweating sickness and you fall asleep then you are going to die i guess

00:06:45.700 terrifyingly one attack did not produce immunity so some people suffered from it several times

00:06:53.320 before eventually dying. So the mortality rate of the sweating sickness is estimated at about

00:06:58.100 50%. So if you get it, 50% chance you're going to die. But so the thing is, so it came on,

00:07:07.540 you have apprehension followed by cold, followed by hot, followed by like, you really want to fall

00:07:11.640 asleep, followed by death. But the thing seems to be that if you survive for 24 hours, you would

00:07:17.020 probably not die. Thomas Cromwell, who is the main character of the Hilary Mantel books,

00:07:23.320 uh mirror on the light just came out but also wolf hall etc um he was henry the eighth sort of

00:07:28.520 fixer slash chief advisor survived sweating sickness three times only to be executed but

00:07:33.740 we're not talking about henry the eighth's less pleasant actions uh nobody knew how to prevent

00:07:38.820 sweating sickness nobody knew how to treat sweating sickness so there was widespread panic

00:07:43.540 understandably when it came around because it's just this thing that may or may not kill you and

00:07:50.140 uh does terrible things to you so that's the disease oh and the cause of the disease remains

00:07:56.220 unknown to this day because it disappeared in 1551 uh so the most mysterious aspect is the cause

00:08:03.240 because again we don't know what it is um commentators then and now say it could have been

00:08:09.660 sewage related issues like london like when we talked about the um the plague village and stuff

00:08:16.420 Like it was just so many people smushed up into a small area.

00:08:19.840 So sewage might be related to it.

00:08:22.200 Generally poor sanitation, contaminated water supplies might have been the source of infection.

00:08:28.180 But who knows?

00:08:29.220 We don't know.

00:08:30.460 So the first confirmed outbreak.

00:08:32.720 So it was even called the sweating sickness.

00:08:34.320 Then it was just like, oh, my God, this guy has a sense of apprehension followed by cold, followed by hot, followed by falling asleep.

00:08:39.940 What a weird thing just happened to this one guy.

00:08:41.500 so this was in august 1485 which if you know your history is at the end of the wars of the roses

00:08:48.840 aka the cousins war aka the wars that are in the white queen and the white princess so that was the

00:08:54.940 whole lancasters i'm going to be very careful to not say game of thrones names lancasters versus

00:09:01.260 yorks and it ended with henry the seventh the first tudor king charging in and taking over

00:09:08.180 and that's henry the eighth's dad uh but in order to win the cousins war henry the seventh

00:09:14.840 brought he used some french mercenary soldiers and so it seems like the arrival of the french

00:09:21.420 mercenary soldiers coincided with the first outbreak of sweating sickness so it might have

00:09:26.240 been something that like was in france but maybe they had some natural immunity to it

00:09:30.320 uh and then it took england by storm so let's see so the disease broke out on september sorry i'm

00:09:39.540 just looking at some dates so henry viii arrived in london with his french infected troops on august

00:09:44.480 28th and then less than a month later september 19th there was the outbreak um by the end of that

00:09:50.300 october so like two months later several thousand people had died and just point of reference so

00:09:56.100 So Henry Tudor, a.k.a. Henry VII's mom, is Margaret Beaufort, who's one of my biggest historical heroines.

00:10:04.560 I love her a lot, and I'll do a podcast episode about her someday.

00:10:07.400 But so she married several times, and her husband at this point was named Thomas Stanley, the first Earl of Derby.

00:10:13.960 And he sort of famously, and this is like in the Shakespeare play and everything,

00:10:17.520 there was this battle happening where it's like, who's going to win?

00:10:21.000 and thomas stanley just kind of didn't choose his side and didn't fight seemingly because he wanted

00:10:26.560 to make sure that whoever won he was on their good side uh and he claimed that it was the sweating

00:10:31.360 sickness was the reason why he didn't join either side um and you know who's gonna call him on that

00:10:38.580 every thousands of people are dying it's like a good excuse and maybe he really had it who knows

00:10:43.120 uh so because it didn't have a name a name had to be given and the name wasn't given by i don't

00:10:50.540 think physicians or doctors it just became known as the sweating sickness this feels like a

00:10:54.760 crowdsource it's just people started calling it that and now that's just what it was called

00:10:58.340 so it is totally distinct from the black death um aka bubonic plague or other epidemics previously

00:11:06.480 known because the sweating was a new and unique symptom and also how uh rapid and fatal it was

00:11:15.540 terrifying so from 1492 until 1502 there was a nice period of time where nobody wrote anything

00:11:23.800 about the spending sickness so hopefully it was just kind of gone everyone's like well that was

00:11:27.880 a terrible thing that happened and thank god now we're not getting that disease anymore i guess

00:11:32.360 we'll have immunity hooray but um in 1502 that is when henry the eighth's older brother arthur

00:11:39.220 the prince of wales died and that set off a whole chain of events that we're not getting into today

00:11:46.020 but so 1502 arthur prince of wales fell sick um and so did his wife a certain catherine of aragon

00:11:52.540 they both fell sick in 1502 the illness was described as a malign vapor which proceeded

00:11:58.360 from the air which not sure what that means catherine recovered but arthur did not he died

00:12:03.440 on april 2nd 1502 six months short of his 16th birthday and because he unexpectedly died so

00:12:10.080 young without an heir his younger brother prince henry became the new heir to the throne and he

00:12:16.000 later married arthur's widow catherine of aragon so the sweating sickness it just seemed to be like

00:12:22.420 sort of like on off on off like happening over and over again but the next epidemic of it was

00:12:27.620 in 1528 which was its fourth outbreak so it broke out in london at the end of may of that year and

00:12:34.560 speedily spread over the whole of england except for the far north the mortality rate was very high

00:12:39.900 in london um because that's where most of the cases were uh henry the eighth who was king by

00:12:46.580 this point so this is where some historians look at him and they're like he was you know a

00:12:51.600 hypochondriac he was paranoid but it's like no he had like his brother had died his mother

00:12:57.760 like people were constantly around him dying of like random diseases because it's like the 16th

00:13:02.400 century so i would say he behaved very reasonably so he was known whenever an outbreak of anything

00:13:08.760 happened he would just like peace out um run off to be not around any people so that he wouldn't

00:13:14.180 die so when rumors of the sweating sickness reached him in the summer of 1528 he fled from

00:13:19.840 court and just moved around from house to house like not staying anywhere more than 24 hours

00:13:23.840 because trying to outrun it which you know germ theory not existing he just kind of had good

00:13:29.400 instincts here so he slept in a different bed every night he ordered the royal physicians to

00:13:34.120 examine him thoroughly on a daily basis and kept a medicine cabinet filled with potions to cure

00:13:39.460 any ailment any sign of illness at court like anyone around him who got sick would send him

00:13:45.180 into a panic which again understandably um at this point his mistress was anne boleyn so he was still

00:13:54.180 married to catherine aragon but anne boleyn was his mistress and he was in the process of trying

00:13:57.660 to get rid of catherine aragon etc um so one of anne boleyn's ladies-in-waiting got the sweating

00:14:04.120 sickness and died so henry freaked out a lot because he was really in love with anne boleyn

00:14:08.940 and also afraid of death so he ordered that anne had to go into quarantine like out of town so she

00:14:14.880 went off to her family home of heaver castle in kent um and this was actually a good move because

00:14:20.400 you'd think like oh you know he sent her away like that's not some things i read were sort of

00:14:25.160 implying that he was it's not very gallant of him to like send her away from him but really he just

00:14:30.540 wanted to he wanted to protect him he wanted to protect her and he wanted to keep everybody safe

00:14:35.400 and it was a good thing as it turns out that he separated himself from her because she had been

00:14:40.080 infected by the sweating sickness and so had her father so he remained in self-isolation far away

00:14:46.480 and he dispatched one of his doctors william butts to go check give ann a little checkup

00:14:52.800 slash deliver a love letter um in the letter henry urged ann to be guided by dr butts's advice

00:14:58.700 in the illness so that they might be together again soon which to the king would be greater

00:15:03.540 comfort than all the precious jewels in the world so this is like sweet actually he he knows that

00:15:09.480 his, his, um, reign is at risk. Like he knows he can't die, but he loves her so much. Like,

00:15:14.520 this is pretty sweet. Um, so Dr. William Butts was Henry's second best physician. And it's not

00:15:21.760 like, you know, the best is for him. The second best is for her. His, his best physician was

00:15:25.660 busy somewhere else or something like that. Luckily for Butts, um, Anne Boleyn and her 1.00

00:15:30.480 father both recovered from the swelling sickness. Um, and that Christmas Dr. Butts was appointed

00:15:37.140 royal physician and enjoyed a very healthy salary of 100 pounds per year the king was so overjoyed

00:15:43.400 by anne's full recovery he sent her letters and gifts um within a month after so she got better

00:15:49.840 but then there's still another month of quarantine to make sure she wasn't still contagious or that

00:15:53.980 it wasn't going to flare up again so one month later she was back at court and the separation

00:15:58.660 had no negative effect on their relationship in fact things were more passionate than ever and

00:16:03.840 that's the part that i remember from the episode of the tutors was when anne and henry finally

00:16:07.180 reunited it was just so the chemistry between those two actors natalie dormer and what's his

00:16:11.840 face so good jonathan reese meyer like when they get back together you're just like he thought she

00:16:16.660 was gonna die like it sort of redoubles henry's intentions to try and get rid of his wife and

00:16:22.240 mary anne boleyn so the whole thing about how this attracted the disease happened to um a lot

00:16:29.960 of young rich people got it so many well-known individuals of the tudor court contracted the

00:16:35.960 illness so including anne boleyn her brother her father um cardinal wolsey who was one of

00:16:42.380 king henry's advisors the sweating sickness also killed numerous nobles and courtiers including

00:16:48.360 um so henry brandon was henry the eighth's brother well best bro they were really good friends and

00:16:55.460 then henry brandon married henry the eighth's sister mary um but then two of henry brandon's

00:17:01.900 sons both died mary boleyn who is anne boleyn's sister mary boleyn's first husband william carrie

00:17:08.940 also died of the sweating sickness so again the last major outbreak of the disease occurred in

00:17:14.360 england in 1551 and then it apparently vanished and this whole thing is so dramatic and also

00:17:20.200 random and a story that i thought well i agree um it was suggested to me and i i agree this is a good

00:17:27.080 one to share so this was this was this week's little mini episode of vulgar history uh thanks

00:17:32.680 for tuning in i hope everybody is keeping as well as possible under the circumstances if you have

00:17:38.460 ideas for other pandemic pods um you can find me on instagram at vulgar history pod on twitter

00:17:43.880 at vulgar history and i'll talk to you all next time the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms

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Vulgar History - May 06, 2020

Pandemic Special： Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the English sweating sickness

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