It is remarkable that the Netherlands were visited by the Sweating Fever[598] full four weeks later, although the commercial intercourse with England, if we were to attach any especial importance to this circumstance, was far more considerable than that of the German cities in the North Sea. It appeared for the first time in Amsterdam on the 27th of September in the forenoon, whilst the city was enveloped in a thick fog[599], and just at the same time, perhaps a day earlier, in Antwerp, where, on the 29th of September, they made a solemn procession in order by prayer to avert greater harm from the city; for in the last days of September 400 to 500 people died of the English Sweating Sickness at that place[600]. It might have been supposed that the damp soil of Holland, and its impenetrable fogs, would invite the pestilence much earlier than the high and serene country between the Alps and the Danube, or the far distant land of Prussia, but the development of epidemics follows no human calculation or medical views! In the towns around Amsterdam the Sweating Fever appears not to have broken out until the mortality had ceased in that city, that is to say, five days after the 27th of September, so that we cannot be far wrong in assuming that in the latter end of that month, and the commencement of October, it had spread over the whole territory of the Netherlands including Belgium[601]. Alkmaar and Waterland remained free[602], as doubtless had been the case with particular places both in England and Germany. _The exceedingly short time that the Sweating Sickness lasted_ in the different places that it visited, was as astonishing as its original appearance. For since it raged in Amsterdam for only five days, and not much longer, as we have shewn, in Antwerp and many German towns, it could hardly have continued more than fifteen days in any other places; thus displaying the same peculiarity on this occasion by which it had already been marked in its former visitations. This short period, however, must not be understood to include the sporadic occurrence of the disease, otherwise, as a contemporary of credit assures us, that the sweating fever attacked some persons twice and others three or even four times[603], we might thence conclude, that, although perhaps in some places the pestilence did, after raging for a certain number of days, suddenly cease, so that no isolated cases afterwards occurred, yet that the general duration of its prevalence was longer than has been stated. SECT. 7.—DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NORWAY.