The Natural History of Tuberculosis in the Human Body

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Abstract
Unless the natural history of a lifetime disease is known, it is impossible to determine with accuracy the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of any therapeutic or preventive measure. Therefore, in a program designed to eradicate a disease it is essential to know the course it takes among people in the absence of specific treatment. Tuberculosis and syphilis run somewhat parallel courses in that each one begins with primary lesions which usually subside without causing serious illness or much destruction of tissues. Dependable immunity does not develop. In both tuberculosis and syphilis, chronic forms of the disease usually do not appear until years and even decades after the initial infection. When seemingly effective drugs became available for treatment of syphilis, attention was called to the absence of a well-documented study on the natural history of untreated syphilis. Therefore, the immediate and remote prognosis in untreated cases was not known. Thus, there was

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