The necessity for making specific etiologic diagnoses in all infections came with the advent of sulfonamides and the present large variety of antibiotics, whose specific fields of therapeutic usefulness have now been well defined. It is now recognized that when antibiotic therapy directed against the easily recognized micro-organism in a lesion fails or even makes the infection more fulminating, search for one of the pathogenic mycotic agents must be made. Every physician must consider the possibility of their presence in obscure fevers, especially those associated with chronic lesions of the lungs, meninges, reticuloendothelial system, and skin.
Conant and his associates have attempted to put a usable guide for recognition of the fungous diseases and their etiologic agents into the hands of the practicing physician. Each disease is discussed as a separate entity, with a short account of its distribution, pathology, and clinical features and a more prolonged detailing of the