| Each year, about midsummer, millions of children and | | | | enough so that he will be able to start treatment |
| adults begin to show various significant allergy | | | | when it can do the most good. |
| symptoms. They sneeze, their eyes itch and become | | | | Many allergic reactions are mistaken for other, less |
| watery. They feel wretched for a month or two. | | | | serious, conditions, especially in the case of infants |
| Then the symptoms abate. These persons are | | | | and young children. Parents often neglect to mention |
| suffering from attacks of hay fever - a prime | | | | these reactions to their physician until they have |
| example of what physician would call an allergic | | | | recurred several times. |
| reaction. | | | | It has long been known that inheritance plays a |
| To understand what allergies are, we must point out | | | | significant part in allergy. A person who has to allergic |
| that when the normal equilibrium of the human body | | | | parents or whose family has a history of allergy has |
| is threatened by an external agent, a sequence of | | | | up to ten times as much chance of developing an |
| automatic defense mechanisms moves into action. If | | | | allergy as a person from a non allergic family. |
| the body becomes overheated, for example, it | | | | Moreover, his or her symptoms will usually appear at |
| begins to perspire in order to cool itself. If it becomes | | | | an earlier age than would otherwise be the case. |
| too cold, it starts to shiver in an attempt to get | | | | However, persons with no trace of an allergic |
| warm. | | | | inheritance may also develop allergies, and some |
| An allergy is also a response to an external agent. | | | | members of an allergic family may be completely |
| But in this case the response to this outside source is | | | | free of allergic illnesses during their entire lives. There |
| severe and the reaction is neither normal nor | | | | is not always a direct relationship between the type |
| desirable. | | | | of allergy in the offspring. For instance, a mother with |
| There are literally hundreds of possible causes of | | | | asthma may have one asthmatic child, another who |
| allergy, and the reaction may express itself in the | | | | suffers from allergic skin disease but who is free of |
| human body in many different ways. One person | | | | asthma, and a third who shows no signs whatsoever |
| breaks out in hives when he eats strawberries. | | | | of any allergy. |
| Another starts to sneeze in the presence of dogs or | | | | It is not allergy itself, but rather a tendency or |
| cats. A third reacts to ordinary house dust. Some | | | | susceptibility to allergy, that is passed on from parent |
| people have asthmatic attacks when faced by an | | | | to child. A person may have a tendency to manifest |
| emotional crisis. | | | | allergic reactions and yet never experience a single |
| The symptoms of allergy may first appear at any | | | | moment of allergic illness. His or her system is |
| time from infancy to old age. They occur most | | | | prepared at all times to react violently to an allergic |
| often, however, before the age of twenty. Indeed, | | | | assault. Fortunately, however, he or she will never |
| one of the major problems facing the doctor who | | | | have to come upon an allergic substance under |
| treats allergies is to recognize the condition early | | | | conditions which would lead to a visible reaction. |