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Non Specific Methods for the Treatment of Allergic States
Discussion of presentations by L .P. Gay, Robert T. Pottenger and G. F. Knight at First Annual Convention of the International College of Applied Nutrition, April, 1961. Reprinted from The Journal of Applied Nutrition, Vol. 17, No. 4, December 1964
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During the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1932, a large delegation of Japanese physicians visited the Pottenger Sanatorium. I was appointed to show them about the grounds. Though most of them could speak some English, there was an interpreter as well. We walked under a great oak tree that was pollinating at the time. The Japanese, who have an eye for beauty, remarked at the beauty of this oak. I said, “Yes, it is a beautiful tree, but as far as some people are concerned, it is a damnable tree.” They wanted to know what I meant by that. I told them that certain people had asthma as a result of pollen. They very promptly informed me that I was talking about the “Empress’s Disease.”
Apparently, asthma was rare in Japan at the time. It is seemingly very rare in most primitive peoples. But, in the United States it seems to be a very common form of disability. Some of you who know of my work with cats have seen some of the slides that I have shown of milk allergies. These reactions were just as truly milk allergies as any human being could possibly have. I didn’t take their pulses as Dr. Knight and Dr. Gay might have done, as I did not know about nonreaginic allergy at the time. Nevertheless the antics of a cat with pruritis ani do not leave much fur on the buttocks, nor any doubt in the mind of the observers at to how the animal feels. It looked like an allergy, so we thought about what we were feeding these cats to which they might be sensitive. This particular cat had a milk allergy. Withdrawal of the offending food cleared the condition.
Our normal cats, showing no evidence of allergy, had come from a long line of cats who were healthy before and after they came into the pens. They had been maintained on an adequate diet, they had very few fleas in their fur, and they were able to reproduce healthy kittens that did not show evidence of allergy. We found that if we put the cats on a deficient diet, they had all kinds of allergies. They sneezed, they scratched; they didn’t purr, they wheezed. These animals developed true allergies, and we found that there were ‘more allergies in the second generation of deficient animals. In the third generation, the incidence was almost 100 per cent. We also found out that we could take second generation deficient, allergic animals and breed them while they were living on normal foods and that the amount of allergy would diminish in the next generation. At the end of the fourth generation of regenerated animals, we would get some normal cats again that did not show evidence of allergy.
The intestinal tract of the allergic cat was of particular interest. We have measurements of the length of the gastrointestinal tract of several hundred adult cats. Our measurement started at the epiglottis including the esophagus, the stomach, duodenum, jejunum and the colon to the rectum. In the average healthy cat those intestinal tracts were approximately 48 inches long. But in some of the allergic cats, we found the intestinal tract as much as 72 and 80 inches long, and lacking in intestinal tone.
We also found that by giving some of these allergic cats a small spectral dose of adrenal cortical extract (there are 32 corticosteroids in the adrenal gland) or whole fresh raw adrenal gland substance, the intensity of their allergy was lessened and their reproductive efficiency was improved.1,2,3
In the matter of general treatment of allergy, what does this experience basically mean? This could mean that your ancestors probably laid down a pattern for your allergy which did not necessarily start with you.
What does allergy mean? If you look up the definition of it, you will find that it comes from two Greek words that mean “other energy.” Allergic individuals, then, respond in a bizarre way to a perfectly normal dietary. Dr. Gay mentioned in his discussion the various things that can precipitate it. I am not a believer that allergy is a psychic disease. Individuals may show abnormal psychic symptoms as a result of their allergy; but, basically, it is not a psychiatric disease; it is a fundamental disease of the individual himself. I can personally bear out that toxemia is one of the things that an allergic individual notices above all when he is in a severe state of allergy. There is a feeling that there is a curtain between him and the rest of the world.
Can you treat an allergic individual without paying attention to his allergies? I think you can, under certain circumstances. But they are not the circumstances of normal daily living. You can take a patient and put him to bed, and if he will actually rest and eat sufficient food to give him a high energy quotient, and will follow the amount of physical exercise prescribed that is essential for him to metabolize the food he eats, a patient can get along without material difficulty with his allergies. I have taken children who have been supposedly so sensitive to egg that it would precipitate them into a state of angioneurotic edema almost closing their glottis and yet bring them to a point where they can eat egg in the hospital under controlled conditions of rest and adequate diet and exercise.
You can take that patient and have that patient with you for a week, two weeks, a month, and you know that the patient has been practically free from his trouble. When he goes home, if you fail to warn the patient about it, and if the parents have been foolish enough to tell the child they are going to take him home, he is very likely to start wheezing before he leaves your institution because the emotions of getting ready to leave increase the pulse rate. A child who may be running a daily average in the 60’s or who has a normal variability of from 60-80, the day before he is to go home may develop a pulse rate of 110. The night before he leaves, he may wheeze all night, and the parents get very discouraged because he goes home and wheezes just as he did before. It is very difficult to handle these patients at home, and many have to be taken out of school. On the other hand, many of them –if you can get them to take an adequate amount of food and an adequate amount of rest– may return to normal school life. In the acute asthmatic state, they do not have the energy level, they do not have the physical strength nor the muscle bundles to compete with other children. If you can raise them to the level where they can compete with their own environment, you can frequently control their allergy . They can grow up and live relatively normal lives.
ALLERGIES IN KITTENS
Editor’s note: Since the era in which this article was written, society’s understanding of respectful terminology when referring to ethnic and cultural groups has evolved, and some readers may be offended by references to “primitive” people and other out-of-date terminology. However, this article has been archived as a historical document, and so we have chosen to use Pottenger’s exact words in the interest of authenticity. No disrespect to any cultural or ethnic group is intended.
References Cited:
- Pottenger, F. M., Jr.,/R. T., and Pottenger, F. M.: The treatment of asthma . California and Western Medicine, July, 1935, Vol. 43, No. 1.
- Pottenger, F. M., Jr.: The use of adrenal cortex in the treatment of the common cold, Medical Record, Feb. 16, 1938.
- Pottenger, F. M., Jr. and Pottenger, F. M.: Adrenal cortex in treating childhood asthma: clinical evaluation of its use, California and Western Medicine, Oct., 1938, Vol. 49, No. 4.