This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
In the preface to the second edition, the authors state that their purpose in bringing out another book on tuberculosis is to place in the hands of the physician, the public health worker, the medical student, and the technologist "information on the essential features of the laboratory approach to tuberculosis." This the book does in a rather unique way for a treatise on tuberculosis. It is not purely a laboratory manual, nor is it the usual text in which clinical and roentgenological features of tuberculosis predominate with laboratory procedures appended. Rather, emphasis throughout is on the tuberculosis bacillus itself; how to obtain it from the sputum, from other body fluids, and by biopsy; characteristics of the bacillus; its demonstration by staining, culture, and animal inoculation methods; differentiation from nonpathogenic acid-fast bacteria; vaccination (BCG); methods of determining sensitivity and resistance of the tubercle bacillus to streptomycin and paraaminosalicylic acid (PAS); tuberculin