[Focal infection on O.R.L. and its distant aseptic manifestations].

In connection with the cases of a group of patients hospitalised in Departments of Infectious Pathology, the authors consider the various general and visceral symptoms caused by the focal infection. In these statistics, fever occupies the first place and in its isolated form poses difficult diagnostic problems which can only be solved by a process of elimination. Repeated biological tests and careful attention to the clinical symptoms are necessary to link what has been observed to an infection which, it should be stressed, is descrete. Articular lesion, very different from acute articular rheumatism, cutaneous, ocular and renal symptoms are each in turn discussed and analyzed. From their personal observations, the authors recall the possibility of serous lesions and, in particular, of recurrent pericarditis. A summing-up of the theories concerning prescription completes this clinical survey which ends by recalling the function of the oto-rhino-laryngologist in the search for the causal infection and the difficulties involved in ascribing responsibility to an almost invariably latent focal infection.