This four part Monday series focuses on Ann Boleyn and the mysterious sweating sickness that had a 70% mortality rate! You can find Part I here.
Welcome back, JoAnn!
Part
2: Running hot and cold.
Anne Boleyn retreated to Hever when an unidentified
lady-in-waiting of hers contracted The Sweat in June, 1528. Butts, however, is
reported to have treated Anne herself for the ailment when he was dispatched to
Hever.
Butts would have been under tremendous pressure,
certainly, to pull his patient through, or suffer the ire of the infatuated
Henry VIII. The prospect of that must
have loomed large for poor Dr. Butts.
Since Anne Boleyn was stricken during one of the midcourse outbreaks of
the disease, it would likely have been established by then that mortality rates
were high with this condition–as high as 70%–even in heretofore healthy
individuals.
Pressure aside, Butts would have been faced with a
patient who was enduring, had endured, or was about to endure a grueling
progression of symptoms. The acute
trajectory of The Sweat was rapid. From time
of onset, death or a turning point toward survival typically occurred within 24
hours or, as Caius would have it, ‘one natural day’.
Anne may have gone through the prodromal symptoms of
violent chills and a feeling of doom before Butts got to her. It’s possible that he arrived in time to see
Anne through the second phase of the illness, characterized by severe cephalgia
(aching and pain in the head and neck), diffuse myalgia (pain in the limbs),
and prostration. Even if he missed these
prodromals, perhaps Butts was present for the eponymous symptoms that would
have followed.
Caius relates that several hours after the initial
vague symptoms of The Sweat set in, more telling symptoms followed. He speaks of the “fight, trauaile (travail),
and laboure of nature againste the infection receyued (received) in the
spirites, whervpon (whereupon) by chaunce foloweth a Sweate’.
As described by Caius, profuse and copious sweating
and ‘heat’ were the manifestations of the fight of the patient’s constitution
against the depredations of The Sweat. Caius, and poor Dr. Butts, practiced medicine
in an era in which temperature, blood pressure, and electrolytes could not be
accurately measured. It seems likely
though, that high fevers and autonomic instability were part and parcel of the
acute phase of The Sweat. This phase of
symptoms would be followed by cardiopulmonary symptoms, according to
Caius: heart palpitations and chest
pain, labored breathing, and an overall feeling of heaviness. Gastrointestinal
symptoms such as nausea and ‘wind’ might also occur. Eventually, exhaustion and a desire to sleep
set in.
Anne Boleyn survived her experience with The Sweat
and eventually went on to marry Henry VIII and give birth to his daughter,
Elizabeth I. Given Anne’s mercurial
ways, it’s not surprising that there are some who say that she never had The
Sweat at all. Could it be that she
merely used the circumstances that prevailed in the summer of 1528 to
manipulate the besotted Henry VIII and advance her own agenda? This scenario is certainly not outside of the
realm of possibility.
The Sweat was contemporaneous with the Tudor dynasty
through the reign of Mary I, known as ‘Bloody Mary’. The Sweat bowed off the Tudor stage in time
to spare the subjects of the last of the Tudors–Anne Boleyn’s daughter, the
glorious Elizabeth I– from its ravages.
(An interesting side-note to the story of Dr. Butts
is the fact that his daughter, Anne, married Sir Nicholas Bacon. Historical rumor and conspiracy theory have
it that two scions of the Nicholas Bacon family, Anthony and the legendary genius
Sir Francis Bacon, may actually have been the illegitimate children of
Elizabeth I, and therefore the grandchildren of Anne Boleyn.)
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JoAnn
Spears is a registered nurse with Master’s Degrees in Nursing and Public
Administration. Her first novel, Six of One, JoAnn brings a
nurse’s gallows sense of humor to an unlikely place: the story of the six wives
of Henry VIII. Six of One was begun in JoAnn’s
native New Jersey. It was wrapped up in the Smoky Mountains of Northeast
Tennessee, where she is pursuing a second career as a writer. She has, however,
obtained a Tennessee nursing license because a) you never stop being a nurse and
b) her son Bill says “don’t quit your day job”.
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