Asthma in Children

Abstract

With the introduction of a practical method of determining by test the reactivity of the skin to various protein substances, the influence of heredity on asthma has become a subject of special interest particularly directed to the question whether or not allergy can be acquired. The result has been to lead many workers to participate in a controversial discussion. On the one side there are those investigators who consider experimental anaphylaxis and allergy (atopy) basically identical conditions, and on the other, workers who, while agreeing that anaphylaxis is an experimental state which can be induced in animals, are dogmatically opposed to any theory which assumes that allergy can likewise be induced in the human being. In other words, they maintain that allergy can never be acquired in man and rigidly restrict the use of the term "anaphylaxis" to that experimental state induced in animals. The proponents of the latter theory agree that asthma per se is not inherited but contend that the "soil," "physiochemic make-up" or tendency to develop allergic disease is inherited. In order to avoid confusion, the terms "allergy (atopy)" and "anaphylaxis" used in this paper will be restricted to hypersensitiveness in man and in animals, respectively.