young people, (probably travellers as well as sailors,) of whom at least twelve died of this disease within two days[575]. According to another account, those who died were not taken ill in England, but on the voyage, and the pestilence broke out after the rest of the crew had disembarked. On this point we have further a most respectable testimony to the fact, that in the night after the landing of Hermann Evers, four men died in Hamburgh of the Sweating Sickness[576]. If we examine a little more closely these very valuable accounts, the credibility of which there is no reason to doubt, it must especially be taken into account, that at this time the Sweating Sickness had ceased to exist as an epidemic in England for at least half a year, that its appearance in single cases, although not contradictory to general views, is nevertheless by no means borne out by proof from historical evidence, and that thus it is a gratuitous and unsupported assumption that the return of Hermann Evers’ crew was connected with any Sweating Sickness at all in England. If we consider, on the other hand, that the North Sea, even in ordinary years, is very foggy, so that, owing to the prevalence of north-west winds, it precipitates very heavy rain clouds over Germany; and if we bear in mind, that in the year 1529 it produced far heavier fogs than usual, we shall perceive in its waters the principal cause why the English Sweating Sickness was then developed in its greatest violence, and we may thence assume, with a greater degree of probability, that this pestilence broke out among the crew of Hermann Evers spontaneously, and without any connexion with England, in the same way, perhaps, as it did formerly on board Henry the VIIth’s fleet. This supposition is strengthened by the circumstance that the ships of those times were excessively filthy, and the kind of life spent on board them was, independently of the wretched provision, uncomfortable in the highest degree, nay, almost insupportable, so that even in short voyages, the scurvy, which was the dread of sailors in those days, was of very common occurrence. Finally, we still possess the most distinct accounts, that unusual occurrences took place in the North Seas. Thus during Lent it was observed with astonishment at Stettin, that porpoises came in numbers up the frische Haff as far as the bridge, and that the Baltic cast on its shores many dead animals of this kind[577], so that we are fully justified in concluding that there existed at that time a more intense development than usual of morbific influences in the marine atmosphere.