Devastating diseases arose, killed millions and then, often, mysteriously vanished. The most notorious was plague (which was really two diseases: bubonic plague, named for the swollen buboes that victims got in the neck, groin, or armpit, and the even more lethal and infectious pneumonic plague, which overwhelmed the respiratory system), but there were many others. The English sweating sickness, a disease about which we still know almost nothing, had epidemics in 1485, 1508, 1517, and 1528, killing thousands as it went, before disappearing, never to return (or at least not yet). It was
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