Thirty-seven patients with acute cholecystitis and jaundice were studied intraoperatively with cholangiomanometry, and a mechanical lesion explaining the jaundice was found in 23. Six others had probably passed a stone, and one had hepatitis. Several inflammatory factors in this group, when compared with a group of 36 nonjaundiced patients with acute cholecystitis, showed no difference. Several causes for jaundice exist, but nonmechanical inflammatory theories are doubted.