The Epidemics of the Middle AgesHecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl)
History
The Epidemics of the Middle Ages
Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl)
Black Death; Epidemics -- History; Hysteria, Epidemic
discovered until a period posterior to the five eruptions of the
Sweating Sickness.
The powers of the constitution were much shaken by the Sweating
Sickness, so that a rapid recovery was observed to take place only in
the mildest form of this disease. Those, however, whom it attacked more
severely, remained very feeble and powerless for at least a week, and
their restoration was but gradual, and effected only by great care and
strengthening diet. After the perspiration had passed off, the patient
was taken carefully from his bed, cautiously dried in a warm chamber,
placed by the fireside, and, as a first restorative, usually fed with
egg soup, yet the generality could not entirely get over the effects of
the fever for a long time. Those who had recovered could seldom go out
so early as the second or third day[714].
Those patients were placed in still greater danger _in whom the
perspiration was in any way suppressed_: most of them were consigned
to inevitable death, (the popular voice ever since the year 1485
confirms this.) Over those, however, in whom the powers of life were
roused to a renewed effort, there broke out, after a short period, a
new perspiration far more offensive than the first; so that the body
dripped as it were with a foul fluid, and it seemed as if the inward
parts wanted to disburthen themselves at once of their putridity by
an immoderate effort[715]. It is clear that this repetition of the
attack must have been destructive to many who, had it not been for
an obstruction of the crisis, would have been saved; for nothing is
more dangerous in inflammatory diseases than when those secretions are
interrupted which Nature has ordained as the only means of relief.
Relapses were frequent, because convalescents, after the disease was
subdued, remained for a long time very excitable. These were seen for
the _third and fourth time seized with the Sweating Sickness_[716],
nay, later writers notice _a repetition of the disease even to the
twelfth time_[717], whereby at least the health was completely
shattered, for dropsy or some other destructive sequelæ supervened,
until death put a period to incurable sufferings, and it is important
to observe that even the bowels participated in the great excitability
of the system, for _too early an exposure to the air easily brought on
diarrhœa_[718].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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