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SWEARINa 187 SWEATING SYSTEM the mere habit of vocabulary, a sin only from the lips outward, as Bishop Light- foot said of the habitual profanity of the colliers of his diocese. In England the growth of Puritanism was marked by a series of attempts to stamp out swearing. In 1601 a measure for this end was introduced into the House of Commons and one was carried in 1623. "Not a man swears but pays his 12 pence," says Cromwell proudly of his Ironsides. As early as 1606 swearing in plays had been forbidden, and even Ben Jonson himself narrowly escaped the $50 penalty. An act of 1645 in Scotland de- tails the penalties to be inflicted, even on ministers of religion. St. Paul's Cathe- dral is supposed to have been built with- out an oath, the regulations of Sir Christopher Wren being so stringent, and this may be allowed to remain its most remarkable distinction. SWEAT, the name given to the per- spiration or skin secretions separated from the blood by the sudoriparous glands or sweat glands. The ordinary perspira- tion is named insensible on account of its being continually given off from the skin by evaporation; the increased secretion of sweat, dependent on exertion and which appears in the form of drops of fluid collected on the surface of the skin, being named sensible sweat. This secre- tion consists of water, carbonic acid, urea, mineral matters, and sebaceous matter — the latter obtained from the glands of that name existing in the skin. The principal salts in sweat are the chlorides of sodium and potassium, with alkaline phosphates, and sulphates. Traces of oxide of iron also occur in the secretion. The quantity of watery vapor daily excreted by the skin under ordi- nary circumstances amounts to between 1^/^ and 2 pounds. Occasionally in some diseases (e. g., jaundice) the sweat may be colored by other secretions, while sanguineous or bloody sweat is not un- known ; the cause of its production being, however, obscure. See Skin. SWEATING SICKNESS, an extremely fatal epidemical disorder which ravaged Europe, and especially England in the 15th and 16th centuries. It derives its name "because it did most stand in sweating from the beginning till the endjTig," and, "because it first beganne in Englande, it was named in other coun- tries the Englishe sweat." It first ap- peared in London in September, 1485, shortly after the entry of Henry VII. with the army which had won the battle of Bosworth Field on Aug. 22. It was a violent inflammatory fever which after a short rigor, prostrated the powers as with a blow, and, amid painful oppres- sion at the stomach, headache, and leth- argic stupor, suffused the whole body with a fetid perspiration. All this took place in the course of a few hours and the crisis was always over within the space of a day and night. The internal heat which the patient suffered was in- tolerable, yet every refrigerant was cer- tain death. It lasted in London from Sept. 21 to the end of October, during which short period "many thousands" died from it. The physicians could do little or nothing to combat the disease, which at length was swept away from England by a violent tempest on New Year's Day. In the summer of 1508 it reappeared in London, and in July, 1517, it again broke out in London in a most virulent form, carrying off some of those who were seized by it within four hours. On this occasion the epidemic lasted about four months. In May, 1528 — the year in which the French army before Naples was destroyed by pestilence, and in which the putrid fever known as Troiisse-ga- lant decimated the youth in France — the sweating sickness again broke out in London, and spread rapidly over the whole kingdom. The following summer, having appar- ently died out in England, it appeared in Germany, first at Hamburg, where it is recorded that 8,000 persons died of it, and shortly after at Liibeck, Stettin, Augsburg, Cologne, Strassburg, Hanover, etc. In September it broke out in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Nor- way, whence it penetrated into Lithuania, Poland, and Livonia; but after three months it had entirely disappeared from all these countries. For 23 years the sweating sickness totally disappeared, when for the last time (March or April, 1551) it burst forth in Shrewsbury, spread rapidly over the whole of Eng- land, but disappeared by the end of Sep- tember. Since 1551 the disease has never appeared as it did then and at earlier periods. Its nearest ally is sudamina or military eruption, which has appeared in frequent, but usually limited, epidemics in France, Italy, and Germany (still called there "the English sweat"), dur- ing the 18th and 19th centuries, some- times, as in the department of Vienna in 1887, in so severe and even fatal a form as to suggest the older epidemic in minia- ture. It was epidemic in France in 1906. The disease is allied to the influenza which broke out among the French troops in Picardy in 1917 and thence spread over the world. SWEATING SYSTEM, the system by which sub-contractors undertake to do