Latest / Ridiculous History / Henry VIII and That English Sweat, Part 1: A Pandemic

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Henry VIII and That English Sweat, Part 1: A Pandemic · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Yeah,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: so much for tuning in during these our days of
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: pandemic that continue. Today's story is about another sort of infection.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But it's an infection. Uh. You know, we've been going
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: back and forth about this off the air. We will
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: quite enjoy the title of this. We're gonna call this
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  Speaker 1: Henry d I and your Mysterious English Sweat. I am Ben.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I like to say switch
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the Swits. That's a little more Australian maybe maybe New Zealand's. Yeah,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that's the sound watch out the bits swits, which which
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: for sweet swit switten bits. Never mind got off to
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a smashing story here, But no, Ben, you had the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: brilliant idea of the Henry the Eighth and the English
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Sweats sounds like some kind of like new wave band
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or like a band that might have played it like
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: C B G B S in the eighties. Like I
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: don't know, what do you think? I think you're spot
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: on with the time period. It maybe could have been
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: part of the earlier British invasion, some group that like
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: just never got out of Yorkshire. Yeah, like a skiffle band.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Perhaps you're reading the headlines about the Beatles and they
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: were like one day fellas one day MIT's uh. Speaking
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of mates, we want to give a shout out of
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: course two our super producer, Casey Pegram case he has,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: like the three of us, never suffered as far as
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  Speaker 1: we know. From the notorious English sweats. I assume, right, Casey,
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  Speaker 1: you're English sweat free. I had the American sweats a
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: few times, but not the English ones. I think when
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I was over there it was like October, so you
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: know it was it was nice weather, sweating was not necessary.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: That's a Casey on the case right there. When I
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: think of American sweats, when you first said that, Casey,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I was thinking of the meat sweats. Do you guys
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: know what that is? Right where we eat so much
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  Speaker 1: barbecue or something that you're like, I'm sweating from the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: physical exertion of eating. I have to lay down. That's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the American sweats right there. But yeah, we're not talking
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: about meat sweats though. We're talking about, like, you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: pretty serious disease sweats that could lay you out and
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: then eventually kill you. Um and it was something that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: very disproportionately affected like the wealthy, which is kind of interesting.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I sat, I gotta say there's a certain poetic justice
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: to that, you know, a disease that only affects the wealthy. Um,
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  Speaker 1: And there's some reasoning behind that in this story about
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: this kind of strange pandemic that swept the land and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: then Boo just blipped out of existence, like Trump thinks
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the coronavirus is going to Yeah. Yeah, sweating sickness real thing,
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  Speaker 1: also known as the sweats, the English sweating sickness. We'll
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: find out why in a second. Where English sweat or
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: for the Latin lovers in the crowd, sudor anglicus. You're right, No,
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  Speaker 1: this is a mysterious infection. Uh. To to examine this story,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to start in the late fourteen hundreds.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: We don't know whether there was a patient zero for
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: sweating sickness. We don't know first got it, but we
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: do know that there's a contingent of historians who believe
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: it originally was brought to land by mercenaries hired by
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth's father. Uh, they're the mercenaries were there
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  Speaker 1: to seize the throne of England for Henry's line. This
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: move bringing in the mercenaries ended what's known as the
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: War of the Roses in fourteen eight seven. But as
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: as historians believe, again we're not on this. As the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: historians believe the same importation of these foreign soldiers may
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: have ushered in the infection known as sweating sickness. That's right.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Some I'm gonna call them historical epidemiologists, but that might
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: not be a thing. They might just be regular historians.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: But there's some theories, um that indicate that, uh in
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: that this this disease was brought to England by the French,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: specifically mercenaries um in Henry Tudor's army. But there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of different theories behind this, and there aren't really
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: any reports of it affecting the Tutor army, which is interesting.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So Tutor arrived in London following the Battle of Bosworth Field,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: which is the most British sounding name for a field
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I could think of. That happened in the August five
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  Speaker 1: and that's kind of the event that you know, you
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: can sort of mark as the beginning of this epidemic. Uh,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's started about three weeks later, on the nineteenth
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  Speaker 1: of September in fourteen eighty five. Uh, we don't really
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  Speaker 1: know who patient zero was exactly, um, but it kind
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of spread pretty widely, at least in the region where
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: it first appeared. It became it was it was remarked
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: upon as a new kind of sickness. Has it been
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: plague plague times? Not not plague time. But the people
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: were aware of these kinds of diseases. It was a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: big deal. The plague killed an obscene number of people
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: in the uh hundreds, The Black Death, the bubonic plague,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you know the Do you know that they call those
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: things the pus filled boils? They call them bubas, yeah, bubos.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. I've always found that comical sounding, but it's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: obviously not comical at all. This is gonna sound weird
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: out of context. But when I was really going through
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: my black Plague phase, I had a fish named Bubbos.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I was just I don't know my young
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: way connecting it. I love that movie A fish called Bubbos.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: A fish called Bubbos, Yeah yeah, yeah. It's a spinoff
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: of the earlier film The Navigator. Uh so you're right,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: between thirteen forty six and thirteen fifty three. This unprecedented
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: wave of bubonic plague devastated the known world, and it
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: had such an impact that people alive in the late
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  Speaker 1: fourteen hundreds were very much aware of this. The world
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  Speaker 1: population was still struggling to cover. Over twenty million people
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  Speaker 1: in Europe alone died because of the bubonic plague. This
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: is serious, serious stuff, and as a better off fact,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: a bit of a tangent, we can see the consequences
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: of the bubonic plague in twenty today. In fact, some
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: people in parts of Europe are born naturally genetically resistant
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: to uh HIV infection due to historians believe the bubonic plague.
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  Speaker 1: But to your point, sweating sickness does not seem to
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: be related to the plague. You didn't get bubos with it,
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  Speaker 1: you didn't have some of the same signs of transmission.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: As far as medical authorities at the time could tell,
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  Speaker 1: Sweating sickness just sort of popped up randomly in different locations,
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  Speaker 1: and it was they found some patterns. They said, Okay,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: it's always after a long period of rainfall, or it's
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: always after flooding, and usually it affects two demographics of people.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Either the very very wealthy or the very very poor. Okay,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: my bad. I said it affected the wealthy, uh, disproportionately,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: but apparently it was proportionately with the poor. Uh What
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  Speaker 1: what about the middles? What? What? What? How they get
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  Speaker 1: out of it? What's what's the deal with that? I
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  Speaker 1: don't understand. Were they just spared by the sweat gods,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: England soldiers on man, you know, England and doors or however?
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: How did they say that in v for Vendetta. Well,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: if you're a fan, you know that what we're talking about. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you're right. It is a bit of a mystery, isn't it.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: For those historians of epidemiology, we know that the disease
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: was deadly. It killed thousands of people, and just like
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: parts of the world today with the coronavirus pandemic, people
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: were terrified. They were they were panicking, and they were
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: panicking because not only were people of the time very
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: unclear on how the disease spread, but we all also
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: knew that it could kill people at an incredibly quick rate.
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  Speaker 1: Like if you traveled back to London in this time,
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  Speaker 1: you could spend a day there and you would hear
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  Speaker 1: multiple people just you would overhear them as you walk
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  Speaker 1: by talking about how they saw someone drop dead in
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  Speaker 1: the street with no no like, no preface, no pre
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  Speaker 1: existing condition. Maybe they're just kind of sweaty. And then yeah,
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  Speaker 1: like in the same way that like, you know, maybe
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  Speaker 1: for coronavirus, the fever is a big indicator. With this one,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: it was the sweat. So if you see someone sweating profusely,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you probably we're gonna steer clear. Uh. It's pretty interesting. Um.
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  Speaker 1: It was like, like we said, it was really out
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  Speaker 1: of control in London. Um. And we have this delightful
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  Speaker 1: and that's the wrong word entirely. I say it's delightful
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  Speaker 1: because it's written in this kind of old English style
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  Speaker 1: account of one of these moments that you're describing, ben
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  Speaker 1: by Thomas forrest here. Uh Forrestier, he's a Frenchman. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: and he had this to say about such an encounter.
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  Speaker 1: We saw two priests and this is me interpreting this
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  Speaker 1: old English writing, so bearing with me it might be fun. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: We saw two priests standing to gator and speaking to Gator,
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  Speaker 1: and we saw both of them die suddenly. Also in
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  Speaker 1: Dae Proximy, we saw see the whiff of a tailor
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  Speaker 1: taken and saddenly died. Another young man walking by the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: street fell down suddenly. That was a weird one. I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: feel like I was lapsing into like Russian and then
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: like a little bit of Irish, and I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: I was just reading it phonetically, but I think the
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  Speaker 1: takeaways he saw two priests talking, uh, and then he
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  Speaker 1: saw one of them die suddenly. Yeah, it makes you
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  Speaker 1: think right close and a tailor as well, a tailor
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  Speaker 1: nearby in proximy, I assume means in the same area,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: there was a tailor who also suddenly died. I think maybe,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and maybe we all care, but I think it could
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: be proximity, as in a little bit later in time.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: But either way, either way we know either like right
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: in the same location, that's probably right, it's probably the
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  Speaker 1: same location. Well, then there's a third one. There's also
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  Speaker 1: a young man walking by the street also fell down soddenly,
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  Speaker 1: but we don't know if he died. Yeah, because at
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that point we can only uh, we can only imagine
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  Speaker 1: that our French physician decided caution was the better part
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  Speaker 1: of valor and ran away. Yes, sir, so the symptoms
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  Speaker 1: were incredibly swift. Okay, you I said there were no
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: pre existing conditions. What we mean by that is it's
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: not a situation where over the course of eight days
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  Speaker 1: you would see someone steadily degrade. Instead, just a few
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  Speaker 1: hours before they died. From what we understand, the them
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: would start having cold shivers, severe pains in the head
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  Speaker 1: and their neck, and then that would be followed by
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: those notorious hot sweats and finally an overpowering urge to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: take a snooze. And um it's it's strange because there
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: are also other symptoms that are reported. Right, according to
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: past medical history dot co dot uk, people said that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the sufferers smelled bad. I don't want to be rude,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: but I do want to point out that in Europe
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and in England in the late four hundreds, hygiene was
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: a different game. So for someone to smell noticeably bad,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: it would be something that was incredibly apparent to someone
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: living in Right, we're just showering less often. We didn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: have a whole industry to make a smell less human. Yeah,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: it was just a smelly time. Remember the stink of London.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a thing it was in general,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: it was a smelly town, you know, there would be
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: there like, wasn't proper indoor plumbing yet, I mean there
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: was was there? The great stink of London is what
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: caused those uh advancements in plumbing, right, yeah, because at
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the time before that, even after that, one of the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: most common ways of disposing sewage or food waste from
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: your house was to throw it in the gutter, which
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: was in the middle of the street. So it was
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it was rough. And we have the description from our
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: French physician about what the disease looked like. And remember
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: this is a learned individual and he, you know, is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: still writing in that same language which we tragedy aside.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I think the three of us find it. It's somewhat delightful,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: so he says, and the sickness coming with a great
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: sweeting and stinking. We read niece of the face and
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the vould body, and of a continual fust with a
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: great hit and hi dick because of the fumes and
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the venoms all over the place. With that, do you
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: see how what it makes you do? Though the fumes
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: he sound like inspector clus you know for a second there,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I love it. And we're not making fun of anybody
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: because these people aren't alive anymore, and nobody talks like
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: this anymore. So we've got Carte blanched to go to town. Yeah,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and and and you know, to be honest, not to
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: talk too much about the acting process here, but it's
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: a it's a French physician writing in old English. So
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: there's some layers. I'm kidding. That was just that was
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: just a garbage accident. But an even scarier thing about
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: this is that we know that this was not just
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: one phase, right, There wasn't just one epidemic, right, No,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, and again it's interesting one to do
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: doing right now because we're in a we're in a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: time right now where a lot of governors and a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: lot of the states are like reopening and kind of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: just talk about like, oh, let's just send kids back
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to school. Uh, and uh, we haven't even seen the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: second wave yet of our personal pandemic. And um, if
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: history is to be believed, and it should be and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: often repeats itself, if it's not, um, then you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: we could be looking at at a pretty nasty situation
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: with a second wave. And that's what happened here. Um,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: much like the second wave of the Spanish flu of
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. From fourteen eighty five through fifteen fifty one,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: they had five epidemics of this uh very very dangerous
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: sickness UM that absolutely just burned its way through England
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: UM and then also made its way into Europe UM
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and and it had like what are we looking at
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: for coronavirus? The mortality rate is super low compared to this.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: This was thirty to fifty percent mortality rates. That's bonkers,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Like that's I mean, you know, you think we're living
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in a panic situation right now. Can you imagine if
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of the people that contracted COVID nineteen just dropped dead
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: on the spot. Yikes. And another difference here is that
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the sweating and sickness, when it came on so fast
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: and so uh intensely, it also led to a quick recovery.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: The idea was if you were one of the fifty
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: to seventy lucky percent who would not die in the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: first few hours of exhibiting symptoms, once you got two
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: hour twenty four, you were kind of out of the woods.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: They were guessing because nobody knew how to prevent this,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: nobody knew how to treat it. They just knew people
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: started sweating, and then they died. That outbreak in five
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: lasted until late October and then it disappeared a kaiser
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: associated for several years. You would hear some aller reports
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of smaller outbreaks at the you know, every so often
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: every blue moon until that is fifteen o seven. Don't
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: call it a come back, or do call it a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: come back because the sweating sickness returned, and people who
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: were alive in four five and it lived through that
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: hellish time instantly knew that this was the same disease,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the same infection had come calling again. And then it's subsided.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And people thought, okay, second wave, we survived, right, But
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: they were wrong. Yeah, I think like you said, there
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: were five waves, um, and they were absolutely wrong. And
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: then the third wave in fifteen seventeen hit and that
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: was even more severe um. And that actually made it
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: across the English channel to Calais. I love Calais. I've
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: always loved when people talk about Calais, cal Calais, Oh
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: frept justus day. Isn't that from Alice in Wonderland? No? Wait, jabberwocky, Yeah,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: there we go. But it still seemed to be that
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the English were the ones that were bearing the brunt
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: of this UM that it was almost like a cursed
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: kind of situation in UM. It reached its peak epidemic
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: level proportions once again UM, this time spreading into Europe. Hamburg, Switzerland, Sweden,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Norway and Denmark were all affected, but none of them
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: got hit nearly as hard as England UM, and at
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the time French ambassador named Cardinal du Belllet described it
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: as the easiest disease in the world to die of. Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: In June of he put the facts pretty plainly. He said,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: you have a slight pain in the head and at
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the heart all at once, you begin to sweat. There's
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: no need for a physician. They're taken off without languishing, uh. He.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: He also talked about the escalation of the number of
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: deaths in the pandemic wave that you described. Noel, He says,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: about two thousand have been attacked by in London. Twelve
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: years ago when the same thing happened, ten thousand people
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: died in the space of ten or twelve days, but
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it was not so sharp as it's now beginning to be.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Everybody's terribly alarmed. He's almost like a he is almost
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: like one of those medical experts in the very end
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of very beginning of who are telling us this is
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: going to be bad? Uh? He predicted a rise. The
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: last major outbreak of the disease sweating sickness, occurred in
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: England in fifteen fifty one, and after this it's disappeared
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: completely and hasn't been seen since so far. I hate
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to do it. I have I have to drop so far.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Of course you do, um. And you know, I actually
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: posted a thing on my Instagram story a couple of
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: weeks ago that was just kind of like adding insult
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to injury. It was an article from the New York
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Times saying, bubonic plague found in Chinese herdsman. You know,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it's like, of course it was. It turns out they
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: find it every now and then, right, Yeah, it's certainly
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: it's a thing, Like so, I know it was. I
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: definitely was being alarmist about it, like, yeah, okay, great,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: we got plagues of locusts and you know, disease and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: uh famine and you know all of this stuff and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: wildfires in Australia. Now we got bubonic plague again. Yeah,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I've got one closer to home for you. I did
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: a story for this on on Strange News Daily. So
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: those two Mongolian brothers who tested positive for the plague,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: they were locked down. You're right, it does happen um
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: more often and gets reported. Squirrels in Colorado tested positive
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: for bubonic plague like this week, tight love that did
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you say tight? I did say tight? But what's the deal?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So are we are we immune? Are we like inoculated
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: against that? Or I mean, I know you can just
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: treat it with like uh uh penicilla um, but with
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: like why why why is there why would that not
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: spread in the way that novel coronavirus is spread if
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: squirrels have it. Well, in the case of bubonic plague,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: there's some good news which arrived too late to save
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the millions of victims in the Dreds. There's like a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: very small chance that you might get bubotic plague. And
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: if you did, humanity as a cure. Now, so we
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: can we can cure the plague. That's why when you
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: see those reports of like prairie dogs in the western
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: part of the US having plague, you shouldn't freak out.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, animals are reservoirs of disease. Armadillo's can get leprosy,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: which I think is just patently unfair to them. They've
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: got a lot going against them already. I did know that,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and you can probably catch it, right. Could you catch
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: it from touching an armadillo? I know, as leproty supposed
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: to be like intensely communicable. You know that. I don't.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that you can and steer clear
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of armadillas because they're weird little bastards. Anyway, I don't
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: think you should handle armadilla's general. I'm I'm a hands
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: off armadillo policy kind of guy. I want to go
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: to your point, Noel, because said something that I think
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it mystifies me about this case, and I think we
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: kind of get to an answer about why this happens.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: But as you said, one of the most mysterious aspects
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of this mysterious disease, the English sweats, was that the
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: upper class of England, especially rich young dudes, seemed particularly
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: vulnerable to it. That's right, um, unlike you know the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: plague which spared none, the bubonic plague, and seemingly much
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: like I hate to harp on it, keep coming back
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to it, but here we are coronavirus. It seems to
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: spare the very young, um, well, not the very old
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: in the coronavirus case, but in this case it did.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It seemed to spare the very young and the very old, uh,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the English sweats. It also didn't ever spread to Scotland,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: by the way, so that's why they call it the
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: English sweats specifically, or Ireland or Wales specifically, London, England,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and then a little bit in Europe some of these
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: other countries that we mentioned. It was very commonly seen
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: in rural areas, but very common as well in um
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: areas where nobility, uh we're kicking around, especially in London
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and the student populations of some of these very high
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: prestige universities Oxford and Cambridge. Cardinal Wolsey UM actually had
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a brush with the disease two times, and that he
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: got it twice uh and and luckily for him, he
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: was able to recover both times. But a lot of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the folks that were in his household, like his staff, uh,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: did not end up being so lucky. A lot of
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: folks did flee to Ireland, Scotland and France just to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: die there. You know, there's there's there's no uh, what
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: is it there's no geographical solution for a spiritual problem,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: or in this case, you know, a deadly disease. Yeah,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: and it started to take root in the zeitgeist, the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: popular culture of the time. You know a disease is
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: serious when people start giving it street names, like coronavirus
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: has been called the rota. For instance, the sweating sickness
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: got the nickname stop Gallant, Stop gallant because it stopped
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: so many young gallants. Uh. And and monasteries seem particularly vulnerable.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: You might think that monasteries are maybe not part of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the upper class. They occupy a unique position though, because
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: monasteries are centers for literacy, right, They're they're academic in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: many ways. Um, but one outbreak didn't affect monasteries near
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: as much, not because they practice better hygiene, but because
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: monasteries were dissolved by then. There is one theory, and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I wanted to see what you thought about this, the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: theory that people in the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: which were the majority of people there. Uh, there's this
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: theory that they were able to weather this storm of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: disease a little bit better because they had just been
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: exposed to more disease kind of like to let your
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: kids get dirty theory, I guess mm hmm exactly let
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: him just go around licking door knobs and stuff. No,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: definitely not anymore ever again oh boy um, but yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know. I wonder about this sometimes been
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we say, oh, I've got a strong immune system,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: like because I'm you know, a filthy, disgusting man. Is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: that true? What do you what do you know about
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the science behind this idea of boosting your immune system
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: by like living in squalor. Well, I am not a doctor.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Neither you. Neither is Casey. So this is not medical advice.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You can't see the zoom, folks. But I'm waving my
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: hands yeah in an emphatic, furious way. So that is
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: not us saying go lick the floor or go get
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: your kids to play in horse poop or something. Those
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: are both just bad ideas. Both of those sound like
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: really solid insults, say go lick the floor or go
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: tell your kids to play in horse poop. Here we go,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: just put just putting that out there. I don't know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I had a realization is thinking about places
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that we can't go and this year and probably beginning
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: next year and and miss the Renaissance Fair festival or
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: whatever it's called. And uh, you know, proost is right
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: in remembrance of things past. The sense of smell is
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: our primary gateway into memory. And when I think of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Renaissance Festival, I smell, you know, like beer, and I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: smell those nor miss delicious turkey legs. But I also
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: smell horsepoop with nostalgia totally. Um, yeah, no, absolutely is
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a very powerful sense memory. I have that for the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: circus as well. I can think of popcorn and uh
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: an elephant poop, which is pretty much the same as horsepoop.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: It smells very similar. Uh. But we're not here to
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: talk about animal feces. We're here to figure out what
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the hell happened to the English sweats. How could something
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that had just ravaged the land and with no medical
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: answer of any kind just kind of sweated itself out?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: O good turner phrase there, man. Uh we know that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: In eight one UH fellow named Dr Arthur board Year
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: wrote a paper that he sent to the Anthropology Society
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of Paris, where he said he proposed a pretty racist
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: thing that maybe had the predecessor of genetic research in there.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: His theory was the sweating sickness effects appeared to affect
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: people who were English, but really was affecting people who
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: were descended from Anglo Saxon's and people who were descended
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: from the Celts were spared because of some inherent inborn
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: resistance or because of some Anglo Saxon vulnerability. This is
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that that counted as a scientific
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: research back then. But you know, it's weird that Henry
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the Eighth took the pole position. In our headline today
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: we mentioned that the actions of his father may have
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: led to I don't know, probably, I'm gonna say it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: probably led to the sweating sickness entering England. But why
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: why are we talking about Henry the eighth? What what
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: on earth does he have to do with the English sweats? Well,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: he is Henry the eighth, the as Henry the eighth,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: the as he is. Uh And it actually there's a
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: theory that it possibly led to him becoming king because
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: uh um, you know, there was such high instance of
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: infection among the royal class it possibly affected or rerouted
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: kind of historical events. So in fifteen o two, Arthur,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: who was the Prince of Wales died quite suddenly and
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: unexpectedly the age of fifteen. This was just six months
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: after he married Catherine of Aragon. That sounds familiar. Um, well,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that. There was no official like record
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of of what his cause of death was, but a
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: lot of folks in the historical circles believe that he
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: was another one of the long list of nobles that
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: succumbed to the sweating sickness. So he was the oldest
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: man in the family, and he would have become king
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: had he not died at fifteen, So his younger brother,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Henry the Duke of York got the job instead and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: was crowned. Um. And that Henry the Duke of York
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: became the Henry the Eighth of legend that we know
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: so well. And he ended up marrying his brother's widow,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Catherine of Aragon. She was, in fact the first of
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: those six wives that that he uh you know, burned
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: through uh, much like the sweating sickness burned through the land.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Henry was not a good dude. Um. But yeah, if
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for potentially sweating sickness, he might never have
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: had the opportunity, yep, to be the full piece of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: work that he ended up being hold the phone. Uh,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: we we're doing we're doing that thing again. Um, where
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: we've already gone long, We're only halfway through the amazing
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: research materials that we have. We think this one deserves
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a two parter. We're really not just trying to mess
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: with you, lovely, lovely listeners. Um, we just try to
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: we we try to have a standard. We try to
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: keep our episodes in the thirty five to forty minute range.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: And um, this one is looking to be a doozy.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna come back to you with a part
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: two of the English Sweats. Yeah, peek behind the scenes. Uh,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Casey starts indicating to us there's this sort of a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: storm cloud that so slowly builds across his brow. We're
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: getting too long. So thanks as always to you, super producer,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Casey Pagraham. Thanks to Gabe Loes Yeah, our research north Star.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed the perfect soundtrack to
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: this story of the Sweating Sickness. If you wish, you
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: can follow us on social media. I think our favorite
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: place is the Ridiculous Historians fan page on Facebook, where
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you can interact with your fellow ridiculous historians, and to
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: get in, you just have to say the magic word,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: which is me been or top producer Casey Pegram's names,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: or some little tidbit that indicates that you know what
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: this show is, or just something to make us laugh
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: or really pretty easy hit us up on that Facebook group.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: You can also find us as human beings individually on
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: social media. I am at how now Noel Brown exclusively
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: on the Instagram. Honestly, folks, Uh, it just make me
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: laugh with a pun and you're into ridiculous historians, or
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: just teach me a word. I don't know. I would
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: love to learn some more weird words. You can also,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: while you're on the internet, find me on Instagram where
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I am building. Uh, I'm building survival kits right now,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: so find out more about that at ben Bullin. Or
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter where I have hot
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: takes some plenty at Ben Bullen hs W. And finally,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: thanks to Jonathan Strict on the Quister, Uh, we hope
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: to have you back very soon. Buddy. You promised you'd
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: bomb our zooms, but you haven't showed up yet. I'm
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: actually starting to miss you, and I hope you're Okay,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: keep up that loot practicing. We'll see your next oplix.
• 33:08
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• 33:13
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