Yet we would not insist too much on what after all must be matter of opinion. When we find the medical world of our own day so divided on the subjects of the spread of cholera and yellow fever, the facts of which appeal to their immediate observation, how can we hope to draw conclusions with certainty from the scant records of 300 years ago--at the best, but a faint glimmer to direct us through the darkness which surrounds the past? That an outbreak of the sweat occurred at Chester in the year 1550, is affirmed by all the local historians. The year seems fixed by the fact that the mayor, Edmund Gee, died of it. We have examined several lists of the mayors and sheriffs, both manuscript and printed; and they each place his mayoralty and death in the year 1550. The Chester Chronicles in the Harleian Collection, state that in the morning he left the pentice (a local court) in good health, and that he died before night. Forty persons are said to have been carried off in twenty-four hours. Of course we cannot positively declare that there has been no confusion of dates here; we only lay before our readers the unanimous testimony of the Chester authorities.[D] We have now arrived at the fifth and last act of the tragedy. The final irruption of the sweating sickness commenced at Shrewsbury, in the year 1551, the fifth of the short but eventful reign of Edward VI. Caius and Stow name the 15th of April as the day of its first appearance, but a manuscript chronicle of the town dates its commencement from the 22nd of March. Local tradition yet points to the White Horse Shut, Frankwell, as the focus from which the malady spread. Hecker, without sufficient ground, places the amount of mortality at 960. But Caius, whom he follows, merely states that in one city (_unâ civitate_) that number died. We are inclined to doubt, with the authors of the History of Shrewsbury, whether, as has been generally affirmed, Caius was present in that town at all. When he says, “Ipse dum hæc tragedia agebatur, præsens spectator interfui,” he only states that he was an eye-witness of the dreary spectacle; and there are reasons which render it more probable that he observed it in London than at Shrewsbury. However this may be, we have his testimony that it spread from its place of origin to Ludlow, Presteign, and other places in Wales, thence to Westchester, Coventry, Drenfoorde (?), and the south, before it came to London, which it reached on the 7th of July, three months after its first appearance. He gives a most vivid description of the consternation, horror, and desolation that reigned. Business was at an end; citizens fled to the country; peasants thronged the towns; many sought an asylum in foreign lands. The shrieks of women, rushing half naked from their habitations, mingled with the groans of the dying, and the deep clang of the funeral bell, booming through the misty air from every tower and steeple, deafened the ear, and struck terror to the heart of the passer.