CHRONIC LEUKEMIA

Abstract

The opportunity to observe the course of chronic leukemia from a time before the disease has caused symptoms is necessarily rare, and few accounts of such opportunities are available in the literature. For this reason we have thought it worth while to describe several cases of very early leukemia which we have studied and to review the available information concerning the course of this disease. An analysis of the cases of chronic leukemia in patients treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital was also prompted by the frequently made statement that patients suffering from leukemia may, under the influence of infection, exhibit a reversal from a frankly leukemic picture to one closely simulating the blood picture of normal persons and that other manifestations of a remission may appear at the same time. This statement has been repeated so often that the impression is current that it is common for infections to