The Treatment of Hay Fever by rosin-weed, ichthyol and faradic electricity: With a discussion of the old theory of gout and the new theory of anaphylaxisLaidlaw, George Frederick
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The Treatment of Hay Fever by rosin-weed, ichthyol and faradic electricity: With a discussion of the old theory of gout and the new theory of anaphylaxis
Laidlaw, George Frederick
Hay fever
=Anaphylaxis.= The conception _anaphylaxis_ or _lack of protection_ begins
with the discovery that a harmless protein injected into a dog will so
sensitize him that, after ten days or so, another injection of the same
protein will kill him. The point is that the change has occurred in the
animal, not in the protein injected. The protein is the same as before
and can be injected once into any number of dogs without harm. In this
way we explain the cases in which drugs and foods that are harmless to
most people may be virulent poisons to those who happen to have been
sensitized by a former overdose. The widespread use of antitoxin in
diphtheria gave abundant opportunity to study the phenomena of
sensitizing a human being with one dose and killing him with another
dose of the same thing.
The symptoms of anaphylaxis first observed were urticaria, arthritis,
and dyspnoea. Then Bruck showed that what we used to call
_idiosyncrasy_ to drugs and foods that are harmless to most people is
really an anaphylaxis, attributable to a former overdose of the same
thing. Next, it was learned that anaphylaxis may persist through life
and be transmitted to the offspring of rabbits and guinea-pigs,
illustrating the cases in human families where sensitiveness to a
certain food or drug runs down through several generations. Then the
dermatologist brought in a list of skin eruptions, urticaria in the
lead, as examples of anaphylaxis to certain foods or to poisons
generated within the body, especially in the intestines. Then asthma was
included among the anaphylactic reactions and, finally, Wolff-Eisner
pointed out that the lesion of hay fever is an anaphylaxis. I may add
here that this view of hay fever confirms my observation that the lesion
is not a catarrhal inflammation but an urticaria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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