Bilious fever died from bilious fever. Modern diagnoses for the same symptoms would include a wide range of conditions and infections. Bilious fever (Latin bilis, "bile"): Refers to fever associated with excessive bile or bilirubin in the blood stream and tissues, causing jaundice (a yellow color in the skin or sclera of the eye). The most common cause was malaria. Viral hepatitis and bacterial infections of the blood stream (septicemia) may have caused a few of the deaths reported as bilious fever. Bilious fever Bilious fever was a medical diagnosis often used for any fever that exhibited the symptom of nausea or
Jaundice for bilirubin due to their high elastin content. The presence of scleral icterus indicates a serum bilirubin of at least 3 mg/dL. The conjunctiva of the eye are one of the first tissues to change color as bilirubin levels rise in jaundice. This is sometimes referred to as "scleral icterus". The sclera themselves are not "icteric" (stained with bile pigment), however, but rather the conjunctival membranes that overlie them. The yellowing of the "white of the eye" is thus more properly termed "conjunctival icterus". The term "icterus" itself is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to jaundice that is noted in