An indication as to identity between the infectious diarrhea in Japan and the afebrile infectious nonbacterial gastroenteritis by human volunteer experiments.

From the end of the year 1947 to the early summer of 1948, a diarrheal disease of infectious nature prevailed in Japan. The disease appeared fairly abruptly and when it was recognized as a serious public health problem, it had already been spread almost all over Japan. It stimulated research workers as well as public health officers as a hitherto unknown disease entity. Human volunteer experiments conducted by some Japanese workers ( Koj ima et al., 1948; Yamamoto et al., 1948) revealed that the etiological agent of the disease was filtrable. The disease was called infectious diarrhea by Koj ima et al. (1948). It was reported by Gordon, Ingraham and Korns (1947) that a diarrheal disease whose clinical features seemed to be almost the same as those of the disease in Japan, draw attention frequently in the form of institutional outbreaks, but sometimes attacked families in localized areas mostly in 1946 and 1947 (see also Ingalls and Britten, 1951; Britten, Rubenstein, Raskin and Strassmann, 1951; Smillie, Howitt and Denison, 1948). The disease was at first named epidemic gastroenteritis by Gordon, Ingraham and Korns, but later afebrile infectious nonbacterial gastroenteritis in order to distinguish from the other