Allergy : strangest of all maladies / by Warren T. Vaughan.

  • Vaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor), 1893-1944.
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Allergy : strangest of all maladies / by Warren T. Vaughan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    removed, the majority of such persons can secure varying measures of relief, even up to entire disappearance of symptoms. The purchase price is often high, involving strict dietary taboos, which may include those foods which the victim has loved above all others,- and de¬ sensitizing injections which become monotonously long continued, and are tolerated only because one realizes that symptoms will return if they are stopped. Medical science has reached the stage at which it can explain to the patient with allergy what is the matter with him. It can provide the needed remedies. It has not yet discovered the cure, the treatment which will prevent persons becoming sensitized in the first place ; nor will this be accomplished until after we have learned more of the mechanism of life itself, until, as the saying goes, we have found what makes the wheels go round. The progress of science during the past one hundred and fifty years has been nearly as great as that in all the centuries which have preceded it, from man’s earliest days. During the past thirty years students of allergy have discovered nearly all that need be learned except the final key. To-day, we can give a clear and probably fairly accurate explanation of how allergy works, but there are still gaps in our understanding of the'why. Like to-morrow’s sun the answer will come. We do not know how soon. It may be next year. It may be a decade or a century from now. The time may come when the paraphernalia of skin testing and kindred methods of study will be discarded, and when one who is allergic, to no matter what, need only take some pill or other alternative remedy which will relieve him of his discom¬ fort. Until that time the man with allergy must continue to adjust himself to those environmental influences which happen to be harmful to him, in accordance with the precepts which have been herein recorded.
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