21 Sep 1485. About this time in autumn, towards the end of September, there began and reigned in the city, and other parts of the kingdom, a disease then new: which by the accidents and manner thereof they called the sweating sickness. This disease had a swift course, both in the sick body, and in the time and period of the lasting thereof; for they that were taken with it, upon four and twenty hours escaping, were thought almost assured. And as to the time of the malice and reign of the disease, ere it ceased ; it began about the one and twentieth of September, and cleared up before the end of October, insomuch as it was no hindrance to the King's coronation, which was the last of October; nor, which was more, to the holding of the parliament, which began but seven days after. It was a pestilent fever, but, as it seemeth, not seated in the veins or humours, for there followed no carbuncle, no purple or livid spots, or the like the mass of the body being not tainted ; only a malign vapour flew to the heart, and seized the vital spirits ; which stirred nature to strive to send it forth by an extreme sweat. And it appeared by experience, that this disease was rather a surprise of nature than obstinate to remedies, if it were in time looked unto. For if the patient were kept in an equal temper, both for clothes, fire, and drink, moderately warm, with temperate cordials, whereby nature's work were neither irritated by heat, nor turned back by cold, he com monly recovered. But infinite persons died suddenly of it, before the manner of the cure and attendance was known. It was conceived not to be an epidemic disease, but to proceed from a malignity in the constitution of the air, gathered by the predispositions of seasons ; and the speedy cessation declared as much.

Note. Two lord mayors (Thomas Hill and Sir William Stokker) and six aldermen died of this disease in one week in London (see Hall's Chronicle), and it is said that of those whom it attacked not more than one in a hundred escaped. The disease appeared afterwards in 1517, and occasioned also great mortality in Oxford in 1575.