How great the decomposition of the organic matter was is convincingly proved from all the testimony hitherto adduced, but it might have been inferred from the very rapid putrefaction of the body, which rendered it necessary everywhere to use the greatest despatch in the performance of burials[719]; and fortunately did away with all fear of being buried alive. Of post mortem examinations we have no information, and even if they could have been instituted, they would, from the manner of conducting researches in those times, scarcely have thrown any important light on the disease. Hardly any physicians but those who had studied in Italy knew the inward structure of the body from their own observation, superficial as it was; the rest learned it only from Galenic manuals; how could they with such slender knowledge have distinguished between healthy and diseased parts? Moreover, the Sweating Sickness could not in so short a period cause such a palpable and substantial destruction of the viscera as they would alone have sought for. Details respecting the condition of the blood in the dead body, which after such an enormous loss of watery fluid, such severe oppression at the chest, and so great an impediment to the function of respiration, would in all probability be thickened and darkened in colour, as well as respecting the condition of the lungs and of the heart, it would be highly desirable to obtain; but these likewise are wanting altogether, and after the lapse of so long a period there only remains room for conjectures. The observation was repeated in Germany which had been so frequently made since the year 1485, that the middle period of life was especially exposed to the Sweating Fever. Children, on the contrary, remained almost entirely exempt from this disease, and when the aged were affected by it, it was as individual exceptions to a general rule[720], and this as it would appear, only during the height of the epidemic; as for example at Zwickau, where a woman of 112 years of age was carried off by it[721]. We have already in part discovered the cause of this perfectly constant phenomenon in the luxurious mode of living of robust young men, and if we look back to the moral condition of the Germans in the 16th century, we find among them the same immoderate luxury as among the English, the same drunkenness, the same intemperance at their frequent banquets, where the wine-cups and beer-jugs were emptied with but too eager draughts; finally, also, the same relaxation of skin consequent upon the use of warm baths and warm clothing. All contemporary writers mention these circumstances[722], and our bold forefathers, with respect to these matters, were not in the best repute with their southern neighbours.