Tarsos and illness' duration

[glaukias]

Hello,
I have just a short question. I was reading about Alexander's illness in Tarsos and in QCR it says that he was supposed to take Philippos' medicine/purge on the third day, after that his symptoms got worse, but again three days later he recovered enough to stand up. Now, I read somewhere that this illness lasted 8 weeks.
How can that be, that after recovering, it took him 7 more weeks to be really ok again? Unfortunately I don't know where I got the "8 weeks" from, but I am kinda confused now.
Maybe anyone can help?
Thanks,
Anja

[xxx]

The disease is generally thought to be Malaria, which of course is notable for relapsing and often presents with concurrent illnesses of another type such as pneumonia.The purge naturally, would not have helped, but they were if nothing else dramatic. And such things killed people more often than helped them. But the ancients understanding of illness was far worse than their ability to treat wounds.

[glaukias]

Hello,
so if it was malaria, it really did not have anything to do with him jumping in the cold river?
I am not sure about incubation times right now, but isn't that around 7 days for malaria tropica? But wh did he have symptoms after jumping in the water first? Just mere coincidence?
Anja

[amyntoros]

I have absolutely no knowledge about symptoms, but perhaps I can explain why you might have read somewhere that the illness lasted eight weeks. Justin also says Alexander recovered on the fourth day after taking the purge, so the eight weeks might have something to do with the length of time from Alexander's illness to the battle of Issus - Nick's timeline on this site shows Alexander becoming ill in September, and the battle of Issus taking place in November. However, Plutarch (19) does say that "Darius was also encouraged by the many months of apparent inactivity which Alexander had spent in Cilicia, for he imagined that this was due to cowardice. In fact the delay had been caused by sickness, which some said had been brought on by exhaustion, and others by bathing in the icy waters of the river Cydnus."This certainly can be interpreted as meaning Alexander was very ill for a couple of months, but this isn't corroborated by any other source - in fact Alexander is shown as being very active in the intervening period between the dip in the river and the battle of Issus. :-)Best regards,Amyntoros

[xxx]

It's a bit hard to ressurect but here are my thoughts on the matter in brief. He was probably suffering from high body temerature and immersed himself in cold water as soon as he could to bring it down (he would do this again during his terminal illness - at the time they had no way other than that of bringing down fever.) He may have had a seizure/convulsion due to the shock to his body temperature and could have passed out. In doing so he could have set himself up for a lung infection to go with Malaria. It is quite unlikely he recovered in a matter of days and I rather doubt he was 100% at Issus. He does not appear to have been in any sort of hurry to meet Darius after leaving Tarsus.Regards,Tre

[marcus]

Hi Tre,You are, of course, much better qualified to talk about the medical issues than I am - but you're right that he wasn't in a great hurry once he was 'better'. If I recall correctly his trip westwards towards Soli was undertaken specifically to get himself (and presumably the soldiers, who had been fairly idle during his illness) back into shape. It was only a matter of a couple of weeks all told, but had he gone straight for Darius they might not have met on the coast road! ATBMarcus

[canto]

I'm not sure I understand when he first contracted malaria. Had he been suffering with malaria for many months before he died? I understand that it had cycles where it was active and then seemed to abate, but was it always there to weaken his immune system?I thought that he had been exposed to a few weeks before his death.lightofdawn