It was the inhumanity of the prison doctor and the English prison system that killed Oscar Wilde.

The sore place in his ear caused by the fall when he fainted that Sunday morning in Wandsworth Prison chapel formed into an abscess and was the final cause of his death.

The "operation" Ross speaks of in his letter was the excision of this tumour.

The imprisonment and starvation, and above all the cruelty of his gaolers, had done their work.
The local malady was inflamed, as I have already said, by a more general and more terrible disease.

The doctors attributed the red flush Oscar complained of on his chest and back, which he declared was due to eating mussels, to another and graver cause.