The blood picture during the alarm reaction

329

ABSTRACTS

emergency tracheotomy was performed. Direct laryngoscopic examination revealed a moderate congestion of the epiglottis and a marked edema of the subglottic area. Eosinophiles were present in a smear of the exudate. Skin tests, including those for milk, were negative. In both cases decannulation was unsuecessful until a diet excluding milk was given. Following this, improvement occurred, and removal of the cannula was possible. A few days before dismissal, milk was again given and apparently tolerated. Personality de Cillis,

Differences in Allergic and 0. E.: J. Abnorm. & Social

Nonallergic Psychol.

35:

Children. 104, 1940.

Riess,

B.

F.,

and

One hundred and thirty-nine allergic children from 8 to 16 years of age were submitted to the Pintner, Loftus, Forlano, and Olster personality test. This test measures ascendance, submission, extraversion-introversion, emotional and stability. A control group was afforded by 117 elementary school children, from 9 to 15 years old. The allergies, as a group, were more ascendant, more extraverted, and more emotionally unstable. The allergic group was subdivided into those with skin allergy, asthma, vasomotor rhinitis, and mixed allergy, and the scores of each group were statistically treated. Extraversion and instability do not tend to occur together in normal children, and in this respect, the allergic children appear to have an unusual personality constellation.

The Blood Folia

Picture

haemat.

During 62:

397,

the Alarm

Reaction.

Dalton,

A.

J.,

and

Selye,

H.:

1939.

acute damaging stimuli, such of drugs, hemorrhage, and surgical a hitherto unrecognized general cludes enlargement of the adrenal of chromaffinity of the adrenal nodes, and spleen, formation of tration, and characteristic blood

as exposure to cold, muscular exercise, toxic doses intervention, elicit the alarm reaction. This is reaction of the body, which is nonspecific and incortex with a decrease in its lipid content, loss medulla, acute involution of the thymus, lymph ulcers in the gastrointestinal tract, hemoconcenchemical changes.

Using 4 per cent formaldehyde injected intraperitoneally or subcutaneously as the alarming mechanism in a small number of rats and rabbits, the authors feel they have shown that a leucocytosis preceded by a decrease, and followed by an increase, in eosinophiles is a constant feature of the alarm reaction.

Gastrointestinal

Allergy

in Children.

Fries,

J. H.,

and

Zizmer,

J.:

J. Pediat.

16:

69, 1940. The authors describe the clinical reactions resulting from the oral or rectal administration of foods in thirty sensitive persons. The foods were mixed with barium sulfate, the group being one previously reported upon in regard to the roentgenographic findings. vomiting, abdominal pain, and oral or Nausea, pharyngeal symptoms occurred in this order of frequency after oral administration Abdominal pain, tenesmus, nausea, and sensation of of the offending antigen. fullness were the symptoms complained of after rectal administration. Three constitutional reactions occurred. Tntracutaneous tests with an extract of the offending antigen were positive in 73 per cent of the cases, and usually markedly so. Because of the severity antigen, only one-half the

of reaction group was

following studied by

the that

rectal method.

administration

of

the