ENTERIC FEVER, a name often given to typhoid fever (q.v.). When physicians separated from typhus fever a group of cases having special features they called the latter "typhoid." As the distinction between typhus and typhoid fevers became better recognized a tendency arose to replace the name "typhoid" by "enteric" as indicating the predominant intestinal lesions. In time it was recognized that "enteric" fever was not a single disease but that more or less identical symptoms were caused by different varieties of bacilli. Hence arose the modern differentia tion of enteric fever into typhoid fever and three varieties of paratyphoid fever, each of the four conditions being 'dependent upon a special variety of bacillus, viz., B. typhosus, B. paratypho sus A, B. paratyphosus B, and B. paratyphosus C. In epidemiology and other conditions in which this differentiation is not or cannot be made "enteric" is used as a group term.