A discussion of the recent literature on infectious epidemic diseases associated with jaundice

It is evident from this review that there is a marked confusion in the terminology connected with epidemic jaundice diseases. When we made an attempt to compare the disease studied in West Africa with conditions seen elsewhere, we found that the term “infectious jaundice,” excluding Weil's disease, was used to denote a variety of jaundice conditions that had been called infectious because of their occurrence in epidemics. The disease we described had points of similarity with one or another of the reported maladies, but cannot be correlated with any particular epidemic until more is known about their specific causes. When we turned to the literature on “catarrhal jaundice,” we found a continuation of the same confusion. The study brought out that, “epidemic catarrhal jaundice” and “infectious jaundice” (not including Weil's disease or bacterial jaundice) are acute specific diseases of unknown etiology, and may even be the same disease.