THE CLINICAL PICTURE OF TUBERCULOSIS IN CHILDREN

The diagnosis of first infection tuberculosis is rarely made by the clinical picture. In most cases it is first discovered by a history of contact with a patient with tuberculosis, by a positive reaction to a tuberculin test or by roentgenogram. Unfortunately the diagnosis is often made and the child is treated solely on the basis of the roentgenologic classification. It is certainly not my purpose to belittle the use of roentgenograms for diagnosis. However, even if the initial diagnosis often has to be made by roentgen ray study, there is a real clinical picture of tuberculosis in the child.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease showing in many respects the same basic pattern which is associated with many other infectious diseases, such as typhoid fever and meningococcic meningitis. There are for all a known portal of entry, known symptoms of invasion and a period in which the causative organism circulates