326 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



symptoms when the inciting substance is injected. Such 

 hypersensitiveness may be manifested toward certain 

 pollens, dust from the hair or skin of animals, powders 

 of various kinds, etc. 



Experimental study of pollen extracts appears accord- 

 ing to Park 2 and others to show that they do not stimu- 

 late antibody production nor will they sensitize experi- 

 mental animals. One might infer from this that hay 

 fever (and probably food allergy also) is not due to 

 sensitization of the individual, but possibly to some in- 

 herent or early acquired predisposition. Where hyper- 

 sensitiveness toward a specific agent exists, the same is 

 not necessarily an inherited condition. Increased toler- 

 ance to these classes of allergy may frequently be devel- 

 oped through the repeated use of small doses of high 

 dilutions of the inciting substances. This is, however, 

 only relative and is not comparable to the regularly in- 

 duced and quantitatively greater resistance of desensi- 

 tized animals. Varieties of dermatitis due to poison-ivy, 

 sumac, etc., are claimed by some to be caused by similar 

 hypersensitiveness. This, however, is questioned by 

 many. 



Drug Allergy or Idiosyncracy. — Allergic symptoms 

 due to drugs follow a dose or doses which are not ap- 

 preciably toxic for most individuals. The symptoms re- 

 sulting are said to be due to idiosyncracy, because they 

 are different from those obtained with larger and uni- 

 formly toxic doses. Substances which usually give rise 

 to this kind of allergy are mercury in various forms, 

 salvarsan, iodides, quinine, morphine, antipirin, salicylic 

 acid, turpentine, cubebs, sandal-wood oil, etc. The symp- 

 toms usually observed are quite severe, with or without 

 chill, skin eruptions, local edema or gangrene at the site 

 of injection, swelling of the joints and lumph nodes. 



Speaking of human allergy in general, there appears as 

 already intimated to be little or no evidence that the 

 basis of these phenomena is an antigenic-antibody reac- 

 tion. The dominant feature in human allergy rather ap- 

 pears to be that of idiosyncracy. A condition resemb- 

 ling anaphylaxis has been observed only in a small num- 

 ber of cases. We refer here particularly to symptoms of 



