Throughout the ages it has been recognised that
certain individuals have an idiosyncrasy for particular
articles of food such as eggs, shell-fish, or strawberries,
and that the ingestion of them would unfailingly
be followed by various toxic manifestations,
such as gastro-intestinal disturbance or urticaria.
This observation has been crystallised in the well - known Scots proverb that "Ae man's meat is anither
mans s poison".
In more recent times John Hunter described
"the flushing and erysipelatous inflammation of the
skin" that occurred in some individuals after eating
strawberries. In 1539 Magendie observed that eggs
were toxic to certain- people. Jenner also noticed
an individual idiosyncrasy to certain common articles
of food. Modern text -books on Medicine and Dermatology
give long lists of articles of food which have
at various times been found to be responsible for
toxic manifestations in certain individuals, and the
success achieved in particular cases by the elimination
of certain articles from the dietary has no
doubt been responsible for the vogue that certain
systems of diet have enjoyed from time to time.
The phenomenon has usually been ascribed to an idiosyncrasy
or idiopathy, and it is only since the
beginning of the present century that any attempt has
been made to explain the underlying mechanism or to
find a cure for the condition.
A parallel is found in the case of Hay Fever
which had long been a puzzle to physicians. It's
seasonal recurrence was first recognised by Bostock
in 1819, but it was not till 1873 that Blackley of
Manchester wrote the first good account of the
affection, and submitted evidence that it was caused
by the pollen of certain grasses, and especially the
Rye grass. Following on this, Marsh of New York
proved the "Fall Fever" of America to be due to the
pollen of Ragweed and in 1885 Morell Mackenzie
asserted that Hay Fever was not associated with any
morbid condition of the nose and was entirely due to
an idiosyncrasy to pollens.
After the birth of Serology in the last decade
of the 19th Century, Dunbar of Hamburg, using a watery
extract of various grass pollens, was able in 1903 to
prove that they contained a toxin, against which a
specific antitoxin was developed in the blood of the
injected animal. He also demonstrated the presence
of 'a specific precipitin and the deviation of complement
in the serum of sufferers during the Hay Fever
season.
In 1911 Noon's and Freeman published papers on
the immunization of Hay Fever patients with injections
of grass pollen extracts.
In 1894 Behring and Kitasato introduced as a
therapeutic measure the passive immunisation of
Diphtheria sufferers with the antitoxic serum of the
immunised horse and the medical profession became
familiar with the phenomena of Serum Sickness.
When in 1902 Chas. Richet observed the phenomenon
of Anaphylaxis, there was a tremendous development of
interest in the effects of introducing foreign protei
into the living organism, and Von Pirquet and Schick
recognized in Serum Sickness the occurrence of Anaphylaxis in the human subject. In 1906 Langlois
suggested an anaphylactic origin for Hay Fever, and
in 1907 Wolff Eisner pointed to the analogy between
Urticaria, Hay Fever, and Serum Disease, and was the
first to suggest that Urticaria could be explained on
the ground of hypersensitiveness to foreign protein.
In 1909 Auer and Lewis of the Rockefeller
Institute, and in 1910 Theobald Smith, showed that the
lung of an anaphylactic guinea-pig has all the
characteristic appearances of a case of Bronchial
Asthma, and Meltzer wrote on Asthma as a phenomenon
of anaphylaxis. In 1910 Fordyce at the Annual
Meeting of the American Dermatological Association
suggested that Eczema might be anaphylactic in origin
and at the next annual meeting of the same association
he extended the suggestion to the case of the Erythemata
remarking that though there was "probably a
plurality of causative agents underlying the toxic
dermatoses, there was no more plausible explanation
of their modus operandi than that advanced by the
theory of Anaphylaxis ". The same theory of anaphylaxis
has been brought in to explain the incubation period,
eruptions, and other clinical phenomena of the exanthemata,
and year by year, diseases such as
Epilepsy and Migraine have been taken out of the
class of idiopathies or Functional Neuroses
and ascribed to the same mechanism that underlies
anaphylaxis.
The whole subject is still obscure
and involved in the dust of controversy, but a large
body of responsible opinion finds expression in the
words of Dr John Thomson who writes that "There can
be no doubt whatever that anaphylaxis is destined in
the near future to play an essential part in the
explanation of several morbid phenomena, which we
have not hitherto been able to understand ".
