Epidemic Diarrhoea ??

[tali1]

Watched BBC's Murder, Mystery and My Family.They mentioned cause of death as "epidemic diarrhoea." - which a book confirms. "Dear Sir, I sincerely regret to have to inform you of the death of your Cousin, Miss Eliza Mary Barrow, at 6.00am this morning, from epidemic diarrhoea."
And yet Google refers to it(if it is same condition) only as "Porcine epidemic diarrhoea " and "It doesn't affect other farmed or domestic animals, or humans." The case was more related to arsenic poisoning from fly paper.So i assume "epidemic diarrhoea" is some obsolete term -with no modern day reference?

[AuntPollyGrey]

Its probably a description of a bacterial diarrhoea outbreak in a specific area, rather than a diarrhoea caused by parasites or food poisioning.

[woofgang]

I think its the information they had at the time....it was an epidemic ie loads of people caught it.....it was diarrhoea......and they were fairly sure it was what killed the lady. I think terms like this become obsolete once people have more knowledge of what caused the outbreak.