Sweating Sickness Cause Mystery

Sweating sickness tore through England in a series of outbreaks between 1485 and 1551, then vanished from the record as suddenly as it had appeared. The disease struck fast, with symptoms coming on abruptly and death or recovery often arriving within 8 to 10 hours, and historical accounts suggest the highest mortality fell on men in their 30s and 40s. Modern researchers have proposed possibilities such as an unknown hantavirus, but no one has definitively identified the disease.

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