It seems strange that after the many years of study devoted to tuberculosis by the medical profession, in medical schools and text-books on the practice of medicine, the fact that this is a general constitutional disease is apparently lost sight of; a good definition or a description of tuberculosis as such is rarely, if ever, seen.
Text-books all define pulmonary tuberculosis and fully describe its etiology, pathology, symptoms and treatment; casually mention in this connection the possibility of secondary infection of other organs and tissues, but describe these secondary manifestations of a general systemic infection under chapters devoted to such special organs or tissues. That this is illogical must be apparent to every thinking professional man.
Allow any patient afflicted with tuberculosis to go his way untreated and, sooner or later, secondary involvements are certain to manifest themselves. I have never seen at postmortem a single instance in which some