[Acute non-tuberculous military lung].

The authors report the case of a young woman with acute miliary appearance of the lung with asphyxia, from which she rapidly recovered. No cause was demonstrated; this illustrates the difficulty in diagnosis of this disease. Contact with a bird, led the authors to consider exogenous, allergic granulomatosis, but immunological examinations did not confirm this. Apart from tuberculosis, almost 50 different pathogenic organisms may cause acute respiratory failure associated with a miliary or reticulo-nodular appearance of the lung. The main methods of diagnosis are discussed in relation to the most commonly observed causes in France.