In Allergy Land

Allergists live in a topsy-turvy world where bread is often not the staff of life but an insidious poison, where milk can do the baby more harm than a slug of liquor, where innocent-looking eggs are the secret agents of rebellion, and where mother love can choke a child. Last week the American College of Allergists met in Chicago to hear the latest reports from topsy-turvydom.

Dr. William Kaufman of Bridgeport, Conn, stood up for the bad boy. It may be, said Dr. Kaufman, that the bad boy is not bad, but that he has a "brain allergy" to eggs or some other food. From among 600 cases seen in twelve years, he cited that of a schoolboy who was "unmanly," always tired, always flunking in school. Dr. Kaufman got his mother to keep a record of everything the boy ate, and also to note when he felt most tired. These times came, he found, after the lad ate eggs.

With eggs cut out of his diet, the boy "became very clear mentally, rose to the head of his class and became captain of the football team." His disbelieving mother tested him with a veal cutlet, breaded in an egg mixture. After dinner, the boy said: "If I didn't know that I never eat eggs any more, I'd say that I felt just the way I used to when I was eating eggs."

Another Kaufman case: a businessman, member of a partnership, liked his work and did it well when the office was not too rushed. But on the busiest days, his partners complained, just when they needed him most, he had to lie down in the afternoon. It turned out that on those days he had a cheese sandwich and a malted milk sent into the office, whereas on normal days he ate a lunch free of milk products and drank black coffee. The cheese was knocking him out.

Dr. M. Murray Peshkin of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital took up the case against misdirected mother love. After many years of successfully treating asthmatic children by removing physical allergens, e.g., dust and pollens, from their environment, Dr. Peshkin found that he still had 10% who did not get better. And they always got worse when mother was around. The trouble, he decided, was that the mother was unconsciously rejecting the child, and the youngster's anxiety caused changes in his physiological reactions. Eventually the children learned (albeit unconsciously) that they could get loving care by having an asthma attack.

The only solution in each such case, Dr. Peshkin decided, was to separate mother & child. He did this, in 800 cases, by sending the child to the National Home for Jewish Children in Denver. The children were well while there. And while they were away, their mothers got some psychiatric help. Among 200 children who have been followed closely back at home after two years in Denver, no severe asthma attack has developed, and mild symptoms have been easily treated.

Other reports on allergy: CJ Dr. Bret Ratner of New York Medical College said that many people who are allergic to certain foods do not react to them if the foods are boiled. This may explain why the British, who boil everything in sight, have so few allergies. CJ Dr. Max Berkowitz, a visitor from Israel studying the effects of drugs on children, found 11% allergic to the sulfas. 7% to penicillin, less than 2% to aspirin.

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