00:00Imagine waking up feeling perfectly healthy but being dead by the time the sun goes down
00:04without any warning at all.
00:05This was the terrifying reality of the sweating sickness.
00:08A mysterious plague that haunted England for 70 years and then vanished forever.
00:12So where did this nightmare actually begin?
00:14Most historians believe the first outbreak started in August 1485, arriving with the
00:18army of Henry Tudor when he returned from France to claim the English throne.
00:22It is thought that the mercenaries he hired might have bought the receipts with them across
00:26the channel, and it broke out in London just weeks after his big victory at the Battle
00:29of Bosworth.
00:30What exactly did it feel like to catch this disease?
00:33It was like a horror movie in real life because it started with a sudden, overwhelming sense
00:37of doom or apprehension.
00:38Within minutes, victims would start shaking with violent cold shivers even in the heat
00:42of summer, followed by agonizing pains in their back and shoulders.
00:45Then the main symptom hit, a massive gushing sweat that soaked through everything and was
00:49accompanied by a burning fever and intense thirst.
00:51Finally, a marvelous heaviness or an irresistible urge to sleep would take care of, and if a patient
00:56closed their eyes, they often never woke up again.
00:58How fast did this sickness actually kill?
01:00It was incredibly rapid, often killing people in less than a day, and sometimes in as little
01:05as 2 hours.
01:05The weird thing was that if she managed to survive for 24 hours, you would usually make
01:09a full recovery.
01:10Although getting it once didn't mean she was safe, I'm catching it again later.
01:14Who was most at risk of dying?
01:15Unlike many diseases that target the poor or the weak.
01:18Reservating sickness was famous for hitting the young, the healthy, and especially the wealthy.
01:22She actually killed the king's older brother, Arthur Prince of Wales, and he was only 15 years old.
01:26Which is the only reason Henry VIII became king in the first place.
01:30How did the famous King Henry VIII react to all this?
01:32Henry was a massive hypochondriac and was absolutely terrified of the sweat.
01:36Whenever an outbreak started, he would constantly travel between different castles and even sleep
01:40in a different bed every night to try and outrun the germs.
01:43He even sent his mistress Annie Boleyn away to her family home at our castle when she got sick.
01:48So she was one of the lucky ones who actually survived.
01:50What do modern scientists think caused this mysterious illness?
01:53Even today, it remains one of the worst greatest medical mysteries.
01:56But there are several theories.
01:57The leading theory is that it was a nasty strain of antivirus,
02:00which is usually spread by rodents like mice through their droppings.
02:03Others think it could have been carried by insects like pigs or mosquitoes,
02:06or maybe even a farm of anthrax carried in raw wood.
02:09Why did the sickness just stop happening?
02:11After five major waves over 70 years, the disease managed completely after the final outbreak in 1551.
02:16It might have mutated into a minor version that didn't kill people,
02:20or perhaps everyone who was susceptible to it had died of,
02:23leaving behind a population that was immune,
02:25because it disappeared before modern science could study it.
02:27We may never know for sure, but it was.
02:29But it remains a haunting reminder of how quickly history can be changed by a single mysterious illness.
02:51The point is completely different from the pandemic.
02:54And the beauty of the enemy to cure is that a lot of cancer can be changed by plugging them
02:54down the road so that they were sucking on the road.
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