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Hi Coral,

Had a quick look at Dengue on Wikipedia. As you point out, it doesn't perfectly fit Alexander's symptoms, because its fever isn't notably intermittent. The annual death rate from Falciparum Malaria today exceeds 1 million and may be as high as 2 million. Wikipedia speaks of annual deaths from Dengue fever being in the low thousands. Wikipedia gives a Dengue fever distribution in 2000 that shows no incidence anywhere very near Iraq (Babylon). Wikipedia gives a mortality from Dengue in the 2005 outbreaks in SE Asia of 1623 out of 227,924 cases, i.e. one in 140. Mortality in adults who are travellers to the region of infection is more like 50% in untreated cases of Falciparum Malaria. All these considerations would make it seem at least a thousand times less likely that Alexander died of Dengue than of Falciparum Malaria, notwithstanding their having some symptoms in common.

Best wishes,

Andrew

It sounds as though most everyone thinks that if Alexander had been Superman, that some Luthor would have seen to it that he was taken down by Kryptonite! The movie Superman is due out soon, and the stars appeared on Larry King last night. Superman will endure.

As for Alexander, I believe his fate was such that no matter whether from malice or natural disease, his time was up...like Achilles, he wanted the shorter, more glorious life, and as fate would have it, he didn't have to write his memoires in his old age! Let his fans do it for him!

jan wrote: It sounds as though most everyone thinks that if Alexander had been Superman, that some Luthor would have seen to it that he was taken down by Kryptonite! The movie Superman is due out soon, and the stars appeared on Larry King last night. Superman will endure.

Can we have a general agreement that there will be no comparisons of Alexander with Superman on this forum? I really don't think I could take it ...

ATB