Tag: the sweat
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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…
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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…