First Paper

Abstract

Infectious jaundice has been known for a long time to occur among troops in barracks, among sewer workers, miners, and rice planters, and its entity has been Weil described four cases with typical symptoms, and the disease is very often called by his name. Well's disease is characterized by sudden onset of malaise, often intense muscular pains, high fever for several days, followed by jaundice and the appearance of bile pigments, albumin, and casts in the urine; in severe cases epistaxis, subcu-taneous hemorrhages, and lymphadenitis are observed. A disease supposed to be identical with the Well's disease of Europe is prevalent in Japan, and in 1914 Inada and Ido succeeded in transmitting to guinea pigs the typical experimental disease, accompanied by jaundice, hemorrhages, albumi-nuria, etc., by inoculating them with the blood of patients suffering from the Japanese form of infectious jaundice. In the blood and various organs of the animals they discovered a new spirochete, which they also found in the human specimens. Spirockceta icterohceruorrhagiee, as it was designated by Inada and his associates, z has since been proved beyond doubt to be the causative agent of the disease in question. A year and a half later, Uhienimth and Fromme," and also Hfibener and Reiter, 3 showed that the Weil's disease prevalent among the German soldiers during the present war could also be transmitted to guinea pigs by injecting them with the blood of patients. It was not until 1916, however, that Htibener and Reiter* announced the finding of a spirochete in the experi