ABSTRACT
Imagine a disease of uncertain origin that strikes one in eight or ten persons in a community. It is unlike anything people have known. The main symptoms are malaise, headache, and vomiting, followed by violent diarrhea. Six to ten liters of fluid can be purged from the body in a very short time resulting in sunken eyes, leathery, bluish skin, lethargy, disorientation, and death. Between six and eight out of ten patients die, many within a day or less of their initial symptoms, some within hours. Nobody knows what to do.
