The medical literature abounds with reports of cases of spontaneously cured lung abscesses. The exact pathologic process in healing these abscesses is not known, as the patients recover completely and their lungs never come to inspection. A woman, aged 49, with a history of a healed lung abscess entered the National Jewish Hospital with a severe type of asthma and died ten weeks after admission. The necropsy revealed a cavity of nontuberculous character in the right upper lobe containing no inflammatory tissue.
One year previous to admission, in November, 1924, she developed pneumonia, which was followed by an abscess in the right upper lung. This was drained by proper posture. After two months from the beginning of the pneumonia the drainage from the lung stopped and the abscess was pronounced, cured. Unfortunately, the asthmatic symptoms from which the patient had suffered for two and one-half years and from