does that sound like influenza to you ?
(as suggested by different other sources)
I'm curious whether all flu epidemics
originate in SE-Asia as suggested by the recent paper.
So, was there flu in Europe before ships traveled to
India,Indonesia ?
Was there flu in India,China before that ?
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It was claimed that it only killed the rich, middle aged - not the young or the old, and that it caused a quick death : "They were dancing in court at nine and dead at eleven", wrote a Poole minister, while Dr Caius, physician to Henry VIII, compared it to "the Plague at Athens, a pestilent contagious fever of one natural day". Dr Caius recorded the signs and symptoms as "... burning heat, sickness, headache, delirium, intense thirst, laboured breathing, erratic pulse, followed by faintness, drowsiness, profuse sweating, sickness of stomach and heart but seldom vomiting". He added "... the symptoms reached their height by the seventh hour after onset, by the ninth delirium set in, and that death often quickly followed... However, if the victim survived the fifteenth hour the symptoms abated, and if they passed the twenty-fourth hour, they usually survived." The Sweat is believed to have arrived in England in 1485, transported from Rouen by mercenaries recruited to help establish Henry Tudor. The first recorded outbreak was at Milford Haven, the port at which Tudor landed his invading force. Other outbreaks were recorded throughout the country in 1508, 1517, and 1551.5
here they claim it was hantavirus:
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Although there were several outbreaks of the ?sweating sickness? (Sudor anglicus) in England between 1485 and 1551, only in 1529 did the disease spread far into the continent. In that year it had a devastating impact, spreading rapidly throughout Germany and thence into Scandinavia and the Baltic area, as well as into the Low Countries, Switzerland, and Austria. This study surveys the effect of the disease in Germany, and in particular draws attention to the astonishing speed with which the medical profession and the book trade there reacted to the crisis, which contrasts markedly with the apparent sluggishness of the response by English physicians and publishers. Nevertheless, it seems that it was the long English experience of the disease that eventually taught the Germans how to deal with it effectively; it is possible that the Reformer Robert Barnes (1495?1540), then in L?beck, played a role in this. (pp. 147?176)
We should note that there is now general agreement that the sweating sickness was not a form. of influenza, despite Ynez Viol? O?Neill
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The Sweate appeared first in the army of Henry Tudor (later Henry VII). After the battle of Bosworth Field, Henry's soldiers, returning home, spread it to London and the countryside. The epidemic subsided the following year, but the disease returned in 1508, 1517, 1528 (when it spread to continental Europe), and 1551.
Except for the 1528 pandemic, the sweating sickness was restricted to the borders of England itself -- Wales and Scotland were spared. It reportedly even passed over foreigners in England and attacked Englishmen across the channel in Calais.
Victims suffered pain in the head and chest, sometimes with rashes. A fever brought the furious sweating. Death came very quickly, sometimes within hours. Modern attempts to identify the disease have come up variously with typhus, influenza, scarlet fever, and, most sensationally (and improbably), a hanta virus1. Parallels have also been noted with the Picardy Sweat, a French epidemic of the 18th century. As with many epidemics of the more distant past, the vague descriptions that survive2 support any number of speculative diagnoses but no single definitive one.
Whatever its identity, the microbe's strange anglophilia suggests that it was endemic in parts of Europe but not in England: This would explain its devastating effect in that country and the resistance of foreigners. In this scenario, Henry's French mercenaries are identified as the carriers.
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Guy Thwaites is convinced that the Sweating Sickness was a Hanta virus. Evidence for his conclusion included the fact that the disease only occurred in the summer and the cases were scattered across rural England -- all suggesting a rodent born disease.
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>There was no need in the past for human transportation to spread the flu around the world.
>Just as there is no need for it today.
>We still have birds.
>Ships or no ships, airliners or no airliners....It's coming...
> ...and multiple strains at once...
birds don't spread seasonal flu.
Only very rarely do bird-viruses enter infect humans
or reassort with human flu.
Hard to imagine that birds could cause human flu-epidemics
with efficient h2h - and then this feature was "unlearnt" by the virus
So, since when is there seasonal flu in humans with
infections each season (5-20% of population),
maybe in winter ?
There should be historical records about this.
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