One morning a little girl's mother cooked 4 new kind of breakfast cereal. The child lifted a spoonful, put it in her mouth. Her lips and tongue swelled like balloons. She fell into a spasm of coughing, began to suffocate, fainted. When "the doctor arrived on the run, he saw at once what had happened, injected adrenalin. In a few hours, restored to normal, the little girl was scampering around as though nothing had happened, says Dr. Warren Taylor Vaughan, according to "Time." There was nothing wrong with the cereal except that it contained flaxseed, to which the child ^ras violently allergic.
woman had hives only when she was in bed. On testing, she was found allergic to corn, To an allergy specialist, the answer was obvious, for laundry starch is often made from corn. When the patient began sleeping on unstarched sheets, her troubles were over.
Son of the late Dr. Victor Clarence Vaughan, who was not only a pioneer allergist but also the man who brought the first diphtheria antitoxin from Europe to the U. S, Dr. Warren Vaughan tells what a layman needs or wants io know about allergy—how "sensitization" takes place, its bodily results, its myriad agents, its treatment. From kapok to camel's hair to cockroach powder to cosmetics, the list of things to which people are allergic is almost endless.
The symptoms of allergy may be asthma, hay fever, edema (swelling), hives, eczema, sick headache, diarrhea, stomachache.—Dr. Vaughan estimates that the U. S. has 6,000,000 people with hay fever, 600,000 to 3,500,000 with asthma, 3,000,000 with recurrent sick headaches, 4,000,000 with frequent or occasional hives—that altogether some 60,000,000 of the U. S. population have had, or will have, some major or minor allergic symptom at some time during their lives.
According to the theory of immunity proposed by the great Paul ("Magic Bullet") Ehrlich, when foreign proteins enter the body, they try to enter into harmful chemical union with body cells. The cells sprout invisible, mysterious little things called antibodies which act as chemical grappling hooks. When an invading protein seizes a hook, the cell gets rid of its enemy by loosing the hook. If there are not enough hooks to cope with the invaders, the person falls ill.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.