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 may be impaired at any point between the uptake of unconjugated bilirubin into the cell and transport of conjugated bilirubin into biliary canaliculi. In addition, swelling of cells and oedema due to inflammation cause mechanical obstruction of intrahepatic biliary tree. Hence in hepatocellular jaundice, concentration of both unconjugated and conjugated bilirubin rises in the blood. In hepatocellular disease, there is usually interference in all major steps of bilirubin metabolism—uptake, conjugation and excretion. Excretion is the rate-limiting step, however, and usually impaired to the greatest extent. As a result, conjugated hyperbilirubinaemia predominates. The unconjugated bilirubin still enters the liver cells and