 The Children of Henry VIII by John Guy, narrated by Saul Reichlein. Prologue. On Saturday the 2nd of April, 1502, Arthur, Prince of Wales, the elder son of the King of England, Henry VII, died at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Borders aged just 15. The young prince, married less than five months before at St Paul's Cathedral to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, had first felt unwell at Shrove Tide in early February. On Easter Day, the 27th of March, his condition rapidly worsened, at the which season there grew and increased upon his body the most pitiful disease and sickness, that with so sore and great violence had battled and driven itself into the singular parts of him inward. Finally, that cruel and fervent enemy of nature, the deadly corruption, did utterly vanquish and overcome the pure and friendful blood, without all manner of physical help and remedy. The causes of Arthur's death are keenly debated. A credible hypothesis is that he died of bubonic plague, which returned to the west country in 1502. If that was so, little could have been done for him, for the best that medical science could offer at this time was to tuck the patient up warmly in bed and dose him with a cocktail of white wine, mixed with the powder of dried ivy berries, ground in a mortar, failing which he should have the anus or vent of three or four partially plucked hens, pressed against his bubos, or sores, to draw out the infection, after which the bubos were to be rubbed with treacle. The sweating sickness and tuberculosis are also regularly suggested. A viral pulmonary disease, the sweating sickness, or sweat, had first reached England with the French mercenaries fighting alongside Henry VII's troops at Bosworth in 1485, when, as Earl of Richmond, he had captured the crown in battle from Richard III, the last of the Yorkist kings. Its usual victims were not children or teenagers, but the middle-aged. The classic symptoms were myalgia and headache, accompanied by a deadly and burning sweat, leading to abdominal pain, vomiting, increased headache and delirium, followed by cardiac palpitations, paralysis and death. Dreaded for its sudden sharpness and unwanted cruelness, the sweat normally took less than 24 hours to kill. Those who lasted that... Sample complete. Ready to continue?