title: [Hepatitis: a longstanding companion in human history].
abstract: Hepatitis has gone along with human history since its origins, due to its prompt identifiability linked to jaundice as a symptom. Written evidence of outbreaks of epidemic jaundice can be tracked back a few millenniums before Christ.  Unavoidable confusion arises due to the overlap of different sources possibly linked to different aetiologies, identified over time as epidemic jaundice (HAV or HEV hepatitis?) and serum hepatitis (HBV or HCV hepatitis?). The journey that brought to recognize viruses as the main cause of jaundice was long and started midway during the last century, when the infectious hypothesis, which had taken place step by step, was finally confirmed by epidemiological investigations of an outbreak occurring in the US army in 1942, after a yellow fever immunization campaign.  Further research identified two clinically different types of hepatitis, called for the first time hepatitis A and hepatitis B.
authors.affiliation: Docente di Storia della Medicina e Bioetica, Facolta di Medicina e Chirurgia,  Universita degli Studi di Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Craxi
mesh_terms: D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000266:history; D006506:Hepatitis A / Q000266:history; D006509:Hepatitis B / Q000266:history; D006514:Hepatitis B Surface Antigens / Q000266:history; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000266:history; D003699:Hepatitis D / Q000266:history; D016751:Hepatitis E / Q000266:history; D006525:Hepatitis, Viral, Human / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D012802:Sicily
chemical_list: D006514:Hepatitis B Surface Antigens