Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sweating sickness

  • John Caius, the polymath who described the sweating sickness

    Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States   John Caius (1510-1573), Master of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 1563. Unknown painter. Credit: Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. Imagine being a physician in a rural community in England in the mid-sixteenth century, always concerned with the reappearance of the Black Death. Late one summer you…

  • “Some little show of nail”: the health of Anne Boleyn

    Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States   Anne Boleyn. Unknown English artist. Late 16th century, based on a work of circa 1533-1536. National Portrait Gallery. Of all the wives of England’s King Henry VIII, the most well known is Anne Boleyn. She is the woman who, one way or another, caused the split between Henry…

  • The sweating sickness in Tudor England: a plague of the Renaissance

    Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States   Portrait of Henry VIII, c. 1537 Hans Holbein the Younger Oil on canvas 11” × 8” Introduction In the recent semi-fictional work by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, which takes place in the early 16th century, the protagonist Thomas Cromwell, counsel and henchman of Henry VIII, awakens in…