Tuberculosis and constitution

Large city statistics show an infection rate of nearly 100 percent for children, but not more than 15 percent of them die. Apparently, these 15% are susceptible to TB, while the majority remain latent or are cured of the infection. It is also very common to find cases when, in spite of the most favorable conditions for infection (living together with a person with TB in the same room, working together with them, etc.), people do not become ill with active TB disease. The old authors have long said that a special predisposition is necessary to become ill with tuberculosis. With the discovery of Koch and later with the work of Cornet this question was temporarily obscured, but soon Virchow and many other authors, especially French, began again to point to the enormous role of individual characteristics of the body in the incidence of tuberculosis.