Tuberculous bacillemia, hyperpyrexia, and rapid death.

Hyperpyrexia, followed rapidly by multiple organ failure and death, developed in a previously healthy man. Postmortem examination indicated disseminated tuberculosis with adrenal involvement, but also evidence compatible with heat stroke. Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated from a routine blood culture. The patient's symptoms may have been the result of his bacillemia or the result of unapparent tuberculous chronic adrenocortical insufficiency that made him unusually sensitive to heat.