Asthma Clues

To 13 million persons in the U. S. who suffer from hay fever, asthma and assorted allergies, came welcome news last week as two researchers offered promising clues to the treatment of these chronic ailments.

Chemical Clue. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Richmond, Va., 28-year-old Dr. Charles Frederick Code told of his researches on histamine. For them he was awarded the Theobald Smith award of $1,000. Histamine is an organic chemical, a product of protein decomposition. Scientists have long known that histamine is especially concentrated in the cells of the lungs, liver and skin, but they did not know where it came from.

Dr. Code discovered that: 1) histamine is a normal constituent of white blood cells; 2) certain types of white blood cells, called myeloid (granular) cells, are the source of histamine in the blood; 3) certain types of mature myeloid cells called eosinophils, which increase when the body is disturbed by "sensitizing agents" such as pollens, various foods, are associated with "increased quantities" of histamine in the blood stream.

Now that the chemical cause of asthma, hay fever and other allergies is known, he concluded, it may be possible to work out a method of controlling abnormal histamine production and thus checking the diseases.

Psychological Clue. Psychoanalyst Felix Deutsch, who left Vienna three years ago to do research work in Harvard Medical School, told physicians meeting in Manhattan last week how he had used psychoanalysis to relieve 100 cases of asthma which had not responded to routine medical treatment. Two main factors which cause asthma, said Dr. Deutsch, are: 1) an underlying susceptibility of the lungs or respiratory tract; 2) a psychological shock. When a psychoanalyst discovers that psychological shock is the precipitating cause, he explains it to the patient, said Dr. Deutsch, and the asthma often disappears. "That there is an emotional background for asthma," he remarked, "does not mean there are no allergic factors. The former may render the individual . . . more susceptible to the latter."

Tall, handsome Professor Stanley Cobb, Dr. Deutsch's superior in Harvard who referred to his assistant's remarkable success, told how he had treated a 21-year-old girl who suffered from extremely rapid breathing. When she was a year old she had fallen into a cesspool and, in addition to shock, had contracted pneumonia. When she grew up she went to work for an asthmatic woman, whose condition made the girl more susceptible to psychiatric asthma. After 15 treatments by hypnosis, during which Dr. Cobb suggested that she breathe slowly, the girl was cured.

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