Little is known about acute inflammations of the papillae of the tongue. From a clinical, anatomic and pathologic standpoint these infections are usually included with diseases of the mucous membrane of the tongue and are not separated from the various types of glossitis.
The fact that such isolated infections occur and that they offer diagnostic difficulties will be discussed in this article. The various papillae of the tongue (fig. 1) offer a variety of conditions for the harboring of infectious organisms, according to their anatomic structure. The filiform papillae are the smallest and most numerous ones; they are spread above the dorsum of the anterior portion of the tongue and give the tongue its velvet-like appearance. Histologically, they are smoothwalled continuations of connective tissue which are lined with stratified squamous epithelium. The fusiform papillae are single, larger mushroom-shaped, club-shaped or wartlike elevations among the filiform papillae and have the same