Bloody Flux

BLOODY FLUX [ISBE]

BLOODY FLUX - fluks (puretos kai dusenteria, literally "fever and dysentery"): The disease by which the father of Publius was afflicted in Malta (Acts 28:8). the Revised Version (British and American) calls it "dysentery"; a common and dangerous disease which in Malta is often fatal to soldiers of the garrison even at the present day (Aitken, Pract. of Medicine, II, 841). It is also prevalent in Palestine at certain seasons, and in Egypt its mortality was formerly about 36 percent. Its older name was due to the d ischarge of blood from the intestine. Sometimes portions of the bowel become gangrenous and slough, the condition described as affecting Jehoram (2 Ch 21:19). There seems to have been an epidemic of the disease at the time of his seizure (2 Ch 21:14,15), and in the case of the king it left behind it a chronic ulcerated condition, ending in gangrene. Somewhat similar conditions of chronic intestinal ulceration following epidemic dysentery I have seen in persons who had suffered from this disease in India.

Alex. Macalister