The treatment of tuberculosis / by Allen K. Krause.

  • Krause, Allen K. (Allen Kramer), 1881-1941
Date:
[1922?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of tuberculosis / by Allen K. Krause. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ually won recognition as the one effective wea- pon against advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, which the period since the discovery of the tubercle bacillus (1882) has disclosed. When the treatment of lung tuberculosis is successful, the foci of disease either disappear or are replaced by scar tissue, or they are sur- rounded by thick, globular envelopes of scar tissue, which prevent the egress of bacilli re- maining within and make impossible the ab- sorption of focal materials. In most patients who recover, the latter event very likely oc- curs. As long as living bacilli remain in the body, in such walled-off tubercles, the possibility re- mains that active disease can again flare up. And it is a lamentable fact that only too many who have recovered from one or more attacks of tuberculosis relapse. Most break down again because they cannot withstand the strain of the life to which they return after treatment. They cannot or will not continue the regulated life that restored their health, and sooner or later they “crack.” This event is so common that the conscien- tious and wise practitioner insists upon the continuance of a modified treatment long after the patient has left his intimate care. He in- sists that the patient carry back to active life some of the maxims learned at the sanato- rium; that he so regulate his affairs that he can always live with as little strain and fa- tigue as possible—for fatigue is his danger signal: that what is work for a normal man requires longer and more complete intervals of rest for him who was once a tuberculous patient; that overindulgence in any activity, while fatiguing to the lrealthy, may precipitate the relapse of a former tuberculous patient. Many patients, amenable to this advice, escape relapse. Most who are forgetful of it return —always a little worse off than before—to re- sume the “cure.” A man who has had active tuberculosis, who. has recovered, and who returns to take his former place in society is “like a man with one leg trying to run a race with a man with two’; and he should arrange his life accord- ingly. A tremendous lot of the world’s work has been done by men with tuberculosis or by those who were often on the brink of active disease—by Spinoza, John Locke, Chopin, Keats, Sterne, Raphael, Moliere, Canova, Schil- ler, Laennec, Emerson, Cecil Rhodes, and a host of others. But most of these had to do one of two things: either “put all their eggs in one basket” and live by rule to fairly ma- ture and even old age, or seize the passing moment and burn themselves out in youth to leave imperishable monuments behind them.
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