Before we proceed further, some account is here required of the nature of this disease. It was an inflammatory rheumatic fever, with great disorder of the nervous system. This assumption is supported by the manner of its origin and its especial characteristic of being accompanied by a profuse and injurious perspiration. From the judgment that we are now capable of forming of the pernicious influences which prevailed in the year 1485, it may, without hesitation, be admitted that the humidity of that and of the preceding years affected the functions of the lungs and of the skin, and disturbed the relation of this very important tissue to the internal organs of life. This is the usual commencement of rheumatic fevers, which bear the same relation to the Sweating Sickness as slight symptoms bear to severe ones of the same kind. The predominance of affections of the brain and of the nerves, however, gave to the English epidemic a peculiar character. The functions of the eighth pair of nerves were violently disordered in this disease, as was shewn by oppressed respiration and extreme anxiety with nausea and vomiting, symptoms to which the moderns attach much importance[398]. The stupor and profound lethargy shew that there was injury of the brain, to which, in all probability, was added a stagnation of black blood in the torpid veins. We must also take into the account a previous corruption and decomposition of the blood, which, even if we should be disinclined to infer their existence from the offensive perspiration of the disease itself, were proved by striking phenomena of a similar nature that occurred in Central Europe about the same time; for the scurvy prevailed as an epidemic, more especially in Germany, in the year 1486, and with such severe and unusual symptoms, that people were inclined to regard it as a totally new malady[399]. Now such is the vital connexion of different functions that every impediment to respiration, whether in consequence of pressure from without, or through spasm and irritation of the nerves from within, or even from a morbid condition of the circulating fluid, infallibly calls forth the compensating activity of the skin, and the body becomes suffused with an alleviating perspiration.