Hi,

I am researching the representations of disease and medicine in
nineteenth-century literature. I recently came across a short story by
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," in which he describes an
epidemic disease:

"THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever
been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the
redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden
dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The
scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim,
were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy
of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of
the disease, were the incidents of half an hour."

I wonder if any medical people here would be able to offer me a
"diagnosis" on these symptoms. Although I am sure they must be
accelerated (I am not sure what natural disease could kill so vividly in
half an hour) I suspect they may bear resemblance to cholera; as a
literary student, I am very naive about the medical side of things.

Your help much appreciated,
Ali