Idiosyncrasies / by Sir Humphry Rolleston.

  • Humphry Rolleston
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Idiosyncrasies / by Sir Humphry Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/128 page 15
    therefore an acquired hypersensitiveness to a foreign protein, and depends upon an antigen-antibody reaction ; it explains some, but not all, cases of idiosyncrasy. To recapitulate, all cases of anaphylaxis come under the original meaning of allergy, namely altered reaction, but some only of the allergic manifestations are ana¬ phylactic. Diathesis {hiaOecns = disposition) is an old word much in vogue until the advent of bacteriology drove it out of favour as being by comparison with visible micro-organisms a vague old-world phantasy. The French, however, re¬ mained attached longer than other nations to the conception of diatheses, especially to the arthritic diathesis. But champion¬ ship of the diathesis was not wholly absent elsewhere, for in 1908 Dyce Duckworth1 proclaimed his belief in four diatheses, which recall the ancient temperaments: he pleaded for the re¬ cognition of the arthritic, the scrofulous or lymphatic, the nervous, and the bilious diatheses; since that date increased 1 Duckworth, D., Lancet, 1908, i, 800.
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