Dysentery is a Chinese medical term that generally refers to infectious diseases caused by Shigella and Amoeba in the intestinal tract in Western medicine, while diarrhea, or diarrhea as it is clinically known, is a symptom and there is no contrast between the two. Dysentery can usually cause diarrhea, but diarrhea is not necessarily due to dysentery, so when diarrhea occurs, patients can distinguish whether it is caused by dysentery from the following points: 1. Nature of disease: dysentery is a contagious disease that can be transmitted to others through the fecal-oral route, while diarrhea caused by other reasons such as unclean diet and cold is generally not contagious; 2. Typical symptoms: dysentery Mainly includes two types of bacteriophageal dysentery and amoebic dysentery, the nature of the stool can be manifested as mucus-purulent-blood stool, the stool of amoebic dysentery patients may also appear fishy smell, while diarrhea caused by other reasons is mainly characterized by watery stool, some patients can be accompanied by a small amount of blood, generally smelly, not fishy smell; 3, accompanying symptoms: dysentery can also be divided into acute dysentery, toxic dysentery and chronic dysentery. Acute and toxic dysentery usually cause high fever, headache and other manifestations, while most people with diarrhea generally do not have these manifestations. Patients with chronic dysentery often have symptoms such as anemia and weakness due to large blood loss, while other chronic diarrhea is mainly characterized by large water loss, which may lead to wasting and weight loss, but usually does not cause an anemic reaction. In addition, patients should be aware that prolonged unrelieved diarrhea symptoms may cause more serious complications, so it is recommended that patients with these symptoms go to the hospital as soon as possible to check the cause of the disease and treat it symptomatically, and do not use anti-diarrheal drugs without authorization.