Zeezrom, who was among the outcasts in Sidom, is “scorched with a burning heat.” Although fever is a physical manifestation, Mormon attributes it to a spiritual, rather than a physical, cause. At the very least, Mormon presents it as symbolic of the burning of the wicked—the lake of fire and brimstone of which Alma preached. Seeing a spiritual cause for a physical fever is harmonious with the ancient worldview. Lacking an understanding of germs or disease vectors, Zeezrom’s contemporaries and Mormon, writing centuries later, linked the heat of the recent fire to the fever’s heat, assuming that the first caused the second.