This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
[Read in the Section on Diseases of Children, June, 1883.]
During the summer of 1881, remarkable for its unprecedented heat as well as an unusual and widespread development of malarial fever, embracing sections of the United States rarely if ever before visited by this supposed pathogenic agent, an epidemic of acute jaundice, confined almost exclusively to children under six years of age, appeared in the city of Washington. Between the 2nd of July and the 15th of October six cases of this disease occurred within my own practice, the ages of those attacked ranging from two to six years. For the months of July, August and September twelve other cases were reported to me by other physicians, three within the service of the Central Free Dispensary, the other nine occurring in localities remote from each other, but exhibiting in every essential particular the same features as those which came under