Sweating Sickness

[Travis]

Anyone got any guesses what the infamous Sweating Sickness of the 15-16th century was? From what I read in this transcript I wonder if it might have been toxin born. It killed within hours, seemed to convey no immunity to further attacks and primarily struck healthy adult males age 15-45 who are usually more resistant to disease than the young and elderly.

If it was a toxin then the obvious questions are what toxin/s was it and how was it transmitted?

 

[casebro]

Seems like a 22 year cycle. That could be once every generation until herd immunity built up.

Or maybe it was every other sun spot / El Nino cycle? That might jibe with the authors idea of the cooling climate theory.

 

[Travis]

But generally when a community builds up immunity the weakest and infirm are the hardest hit when the disease first enters the population. Here they seemed to have been preferentially spared. Either the men were somehow in greater contact with the pathogen which had a limited capability to be retransmitted or the men were in greater contact with something environmental that created the syndrome of symptoms.

A knock on it being a toxin is its spread to other population centers along trade routes unless the toxic agent was itself also being traded as a commodity of some sort.

 

[Modified]

So it was not always fatal but an attack did not result in immunity even in the short term. Does that happen with viruses?

 

[casebro]

Didn't the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 also hit the young adult generation hardest? Or is it Polio I'm thinking of?

I do know that there is a known immunity gap- too old for the mothers immunity to still protect the child, not old enough for the youngster to build immunity of its own. So I'm thinking something like that may be the root of the 22 year cycle of Sweating Sickness.

 

[Travis]

So it was not always fatal but an attack did not result in immunity even in the short term. Does that happen with viruses?

I'm not an Immunologist so the incidence of such is something I don't know but I'd imagine that it would be more prevalent in a virus that is prone to rapid mutation.

Didn't the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 also hit the young adult generation hardest? Or is it Polio I'm thinking of?

I do know that there is a known immunity gap- too old for the mothers immunity to still protect the child, not old enough for the youngster to build immunity of its own. So I'm thinking something like that may be the root of the 22 year cycle of Sweating Sickness.

The Spanish Flu is also a pandemic mystery that did also seem to be more deadly to healthy adults and its rather sudden appearance all over the world is quite strange itself. Polio used to be most deadly in children but right before it was eradicated it seemed to have a higher mortality in adults.

It's possible that the Sweating Sickness might have been like some of the pox diseases which can be tolerated by children but deadly for adults. However there is usually conferred immunity to those who get those diseases and survive.

 

[Travis]

There's some evidence that there was an auto-immunological component to the Spanish Flu which would mean that a healthy immune system might have made it deadlier to the individual.