Preface Until recently, the predominant clinical picture of the infection due to amebae was considered to be amebic dysentery in the intestinal form and abscess of the liver in the extraintestinal form.1-4,11 As the dermatological factor of pellagra was foremost in the thought of physicians and thus held back the recognition of pellagra as a general disturbance of the tissues, so can one say that the dysentery syndrome of amebiasis has captivated the imagination of the doctors and held back the more thorough knowledge of the chronic extraintestinal manifestations of this illness. Nonsuppurative chronic amebic hepatitis was widely ignored until now; many physicians denied its existence, while others considered this entity as a presuppurative stage, attributed only minor clinical importance to it, and compared it with the posthepatitic syndrome which sometimes follows viral hepatitis.5,6 During the last few years we have collected experimental data which reinforce our longstanding