A Virus from Epidemic Vomiting Disease

An illness consisting of vomiting, fever, and mild diarrhoea after a short incubation period was observed in a boarding school and reproduced in volunteers who received filtered extracts of faeces from a typical case. The main discriminatory diagnostic feature of the illness in volunteers was vomiting. The faeces contained no pathogenic bacteria nor any virus that could be detected in tissue cultures and there was no evidence that an infective agent could be grown in organ cultures of human intestine. The agent was shown to be ether stable and passed a 50-nm filter. Laboratory studies on another agent of uncertain significance and obtained in other epidemics are briefly described.