Made me feel ill

Don't get the topic of this thread wrong, I think this film is a masterful production (even with its flaws)
But I have never had this experience strike me quite to potently ever before in my years of watching films. I've sat through many a gory film in my day, all without flinching. Yet in the scene at the beginning when Cardinal Mazarin is dying and they talk about bleeding him, I nearly fainted...my forehead sweat profusely, I got dizzy and lightheaded and felt claustrophobic.
It was a combination of the way the Cardinal looked and sounded so sickly, the discussion over what will happen on account of the bleeding (their reasoning), the fact they were to bleed him from his foot, and all of this after they smell his sweat and inspect his bedpan, made me want to leap out of my seat and run out of the theater...and nothing ever happened on screen. o.O
Anybody else get /really really/ uncomfortable from this scene?
The only other time I've felt something close to this was the tracheotomy scene in The Princess and the Warrior, but it didn't affect me nearly as much as this Rossellini made for TV history film ._.