Infectious disease

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language

·add. ·- Any disease caused by the entrance, growth, and multiplication of bacteria or protozoans in the body; a germ disease. It may not be contagious.

II. Infectious disease ·add. ·- Sometimes, as distinguished from contagious disease, such a disease communicated by germs carried in the air or water, and thus spread without contact with the patient, as measles.