The discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Robert Koch in 1882 made possible the extensive and varied studies which have since disclosed much that is important and interesting concerning obscure tuberculous lesions. Before Koch's epoch making research, many of the older clinicians assumed pulmonary hemorrhage to be an inevitable sequence of tuberculosis. Faulty postulation of the nature indicated was not altogether unjustifiable in view of the fact that microscopy and bacteriology were in their infantile stages of development.
Andral, Addison, Morgagni, Jacourd, Handfield, Jones, Sutton and Clark are included among the investigators who recognized nontuberculous fibrosis of the lungs as a distinct entity.
The report of the case that follows deals with that form of fibrosis which is independent of the tubercle bacillus. Without having been initiated fully into the characteristic diagnostic problems, one reaches the decision largely by the process of exclusion and conditions are often wrongly labeled "tuberculosis."