Abstract

Tuberculous peritonitis is not a primary disease, but, like septic peritonitis, is symptomatic, having its origin in some local focus of infection. The most common sites of such local foci are the fallopian tubes in women, some part of the intestinal tract in both women and men, and the lymphatic glands and channels, especially in children. Occasionally the primary focus will be found in the stomach, the spleen, the liver, the gallbladder or the genito-urinary tract. To consider tuberculous peritonitis an entity, or to treat it as such, leads to confusion, whereas if it is looked on as a secondary process, due to some primary focus, we are led to search for the primary focus and to direct treatment leading toward cure. REMOVAL OF THE LOCAL FOCUS In 1904, in the Address on Surgery, presented before the Mississippi Valley Medical Association, I1called attention to the fact that when the

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