Finding Tuberculosis

Abstract

5M /[ANY diseases to which human flesh is heir present symptoms that are more or less obvious and recognizable to any welltrained nurse and even to an intelligent layman. Fortunately for us, most of our ills give us pain or there are external conditions that are sufficiently alarming to send us to a physician for diagnosis. Not so with tuberculosis. With the occasional exception of the early hemorrhage case, most of the signs and symptoms of tuberculosis are subtle and not easily detected except to the practiced worker. Such early danger signals as cough, loss of weight, loss of appetite, and general malaise may indicate a condition of fairly well-defined tuberculosis or a minimal case, or they may indicate a score or more of other conditions in which the tubercle bacillus plays no part. This is particularly true with regard to the childhood type of tuberculosis where the evidence of disease itself can be found only after a tuberculin test and an x-ray. The outstanding danger sign here is not loss of weight nor a run-down condition, nor even so-called malnutrition, but it is rather a family history of contact which, sad to relate, is too frequently overlooked. Because of the subtlety of tuberculosis and the manner in which it steals upon the individual, both child and adult, without warning the nurse who sees very little of the disease, either in training or afterwards, is prone to neglect her responsibility with regard to it. Private duty nursing throws nurses in contact with many and varied family conditions. It is hardly neces-