But we have, moreover, to survey the disease in another point of view, namely, in relation to its peculiar character. In the outset we designated _the Sweating Sickness as a rheumatic fever_, and if we take the notion of a rheumatic affection, as in propriety we ought, in its widest acceptation, weighty and convincing grounds have been adduced in the course of our whole inquiry in confirmation of this view. When we observe that those very nations were visited by the Sweating Fever, which are characterized by a fair skin, blue eyes, and light hair—the marks of the German race, it may with justice be assumed, that even this peculiarity in the structure of the body rendered it susceptible of this extraordinary disease. It is this which causes the proneness to fluxes of all kinds, and which makes these diseases endemic in the north of Europe, whilst the dark-haired southern nations and the blacks in the tropical climates remain, under similar circumstances[723], more free from them. If it be remembered further how overcharged with water were the lower strata of the atmosphere in which the pestilent Sweating Fevers existed, what thick and even offensive mists prepared the way for the disease and indicated its approach, what rapid alternations of freezing cold and excessive heat took place in the summer of 1529; and, moreover, how frequent all kinds of fluxes were in this very year, the complete form of the rheumatic constitution will be recognised in every individual feature. Did we possess in the showy systems of modern times a maturer knowledge of the electricity of living bodies, much light would of necessity hence be thrown on the great object of our research. We should not then be compelled to rest satisfied with the fact that a cloudy atmosphere abstracts electricity from the body, robs the skin and lungs of their electrical atmosphere, disturbs their mutual electrical relation with the external world, and by this disturbance prepares the body for rheumatic indisposition, with all that peculiar decomposition of the fluids, irritable tension of the nerves, fever, and painful affection of particular parts, with which it is accompanied. If this disturbance be represented according to certain new and inviting hypotheses, supported by some important facts[724], as being perhaps an accumulation of electricity in the interior of the body, owing to a morbid, isolating activity of the skin, we may expect a more perfect knowledge of the nature of rheumatism through the medium of future diligent researches; and until these be made, some evident signs of connexion between rheumatic affections and the English Sweating Sickness will perhaps be sufficient to demonstrate the rheumatic nature of this latter disease.