BEATING THE BLACK DEATH

Writing about the first outbreak of the English Sweating Sickness of 1485 in London, French physician Thomas Le Forestier provided a gripping eyewitness account that encapsulated the terror it sowed. “We saw two priests standing and speaking together, and we saw both of them die suddenly. Also we saw the wife of a tailor taken and suddenly died. Another young man walking by the street fell down suddenly.” Le Forestier communicated the randomness of epidemic illness: men and women, not only the merchant classes but also the clergy, were vulnerable. Although, as a learned doctor, he had considerable medical expertise, he was powerless to help these people affected by an acute, unknown and deadly fever.

It’s no coincidence that Le Forestier defined this illness in terms of sudden death. If a person died unexpectedly, they had not had a chance to confess their sins to a priest, and thus the fate of their soul was in danger. Concerns about the soul were closely bound up with anxieties about bodily health in the Middle Ages. It was sometimes held that illness was inflicted by God as a result of