Toxic hepatitis is known to both clinician and pathologist. Pathologists know the fatal form, acute yellow or red atrophy, characterized grossly by the small atrophic liver and microscopically by necrosis of the liver cells. Clinicians are more familiar with a nonfatal form of hepatitis, of which so-called catarrhal jaundice is typical. In cases of the latter condition the liver is usually enlarged, and since recovery is the usual outcome, knowledge of the pathologic changes is meager, except for a few histologic descriptions which are available from biopsies of the liver or from autopsy in cases of accidental death (Klemperer,1 Schrumpf,2 Popper,3 Eppinger and his associates4 and Aschoff5).
Eppinger6 was the first to state that catarrhal jaundice is the miniature form of acute yellow atrophy. The few histologic observations available confirm the statement, later supported by Gaskell,7 Boyd8 and others. Animal experiments with allylformiate intoxication by Popper9 have revealed the transition