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SUMMARY Smodingium argutum posscsses in its sap a C17-catechol which brings about a dermatitis of poisonivy type. Mass spectrometry shows that American poison ivy, an oriental sumac and Smodingium all produce in differing amounts a series of related compounds which are responsiblc for skin reactions. History, ecology, botany, histology and treatment are reviewed.

In this study an endotoxic substance was extracted from the cells ofCryptococcus neoformans and the physicochemical and biological properties of this substance (Cr-ET) were investigated. In comparison with endotoxin of gram-negative bacteria, the lethality of Cr-ET for mice and chick embryos was low and such biological activities were weak as the pyrogenic effect on rabbits and effects on the leucocyte count and blood sugar level in rabbits. Skin reactions (both primary and Shwartzman reactions) were elicited in rabbits by relatively large dose of Cr-ET. Unlike bacterial endotoxin, hyperreactivity to Cr-ET was not induced in mice by prior infection with BCG.

The doses required to control 50% of tumours at 150 days after irradiation had previously been determined for three neutron and three X-ray fractionation schedules : single doses, 5 fractions in 9 days (5F/9d) and 9F/l8d. The present experiments extend this work to 3F/4d and 15F/18d neutron and X-ray fractionation schedules. The tumour control results were compared with skin reactions caused in the feet of albino mice by the same dose schedules. Little difference in therapeutic effectiveness was found between the neutron and X-ray results, both the neutron and X-ray 3F/4d schedules being good and both 15F/l8d schedules being poor.

Cutaneous cryptococcosis was produced in mice and guinea-pigs, 50% of which received cortisone, by 3 routes: subcutaneous, intradermal and by scarification. The clinical, mycological and histological aspects of the infection were studied.C. neoformans spreads into the organism from the skin and eventually causes death by systemic cryptococcosis. In cortisone-treated animals the inflammatory skin reactions are reduced, thereby allowing the yeasts to spread within the body.

The doses required to control 50 per cent of tumours at 150 days after irradiation were determined for eight fractionated X-ray schedules. The tumours were first-generation transplants from spontaneous mammary tumours in C3H/ He mice. The schedules were: single doses, 5, 9 or 15 fractions given daily excluding weekends, and 2, 3, 5 or 9 fractions at the two-day interval known to be optimal for reoxygenation in these tumours after a priming dose of 1,500 rads. For comparison, skin reactions on the feet of albino mice were determined, using the same fractionation schedules, in order to plot the tumour control probability (TCP) against skin reactions for corresponding schedules. Two optimum schedules were found which gave maximum local control of tumours for the lowest skin reaction: nine fractions in ten days (9F/10d) and 5F/9d. The treatments given in shorter overall times were fairly good if the two-day intervals were used but were poor for “daily” doses. Both schedules employing overall times of...

This report deals with the continuing problem of skin reactions found in some patients undergoing radiotherapy with a Clinac-4 linear accelerator. Various physical parameters of this machine were measured in an effort to explain these reactions. Qualitative and quantitative results indicate an undesirable “edge effect” from the lead-antimony beam flattening filter, manifested by a “halo” region found at the periphery of large treatment fields. Higher radiation intensity and modified beam quality were demonstrated in this peripheral “halo” region. Clinical treatment factors and patient skin reactions are discussed in relation to these physical measurements.

Serologically active polysaccharide, galactomannan, was isolated from whole cells ofH. capsulatum, H. duboisii, P. brasiliensis andB. dermatitidis, and their chemical structure and immunological properties were described.

Following prophylactic immunization by injections of Dick toxin (streptococcus culture filtrate) in persons having the positive skin reaction to Dick toxin, particularly to the heat-labile toxin contained therein, ?i. e., persons susceptible to scarlet fever? , their skin reactions to this toxin will be negative. Likewise serum from these persons before immunization fails to induce the Schultz-Charlton blanching phenomenon, while after immunization their serum will produce blanching as demonstrated by many experiments conducted at this hospital. This is what we call the Dick immunization.

The present study demonstrates that intracutaneous modulations of bacterial enzymes (Novo alcalase and Monsanto DA-10) used in laundry detergents induce significant levels of homocytotropic antibody in rhesus monkeys. None of the animals immunized with these bacterial enzymes developed either Arthus or delayed skin reactions during the duration of this study. The ability to induce atopic reactions in rhesus monkeys with bacterial enzymes used in laundry detergents provides an animal model which permits evaluation of: (1) the relative allergenicity of bacterial enzymes and (2) the changes in bronchial or alveolar functions at various stages after sensitization.

1. 1. A method for the construction and operation of a simple contour gauge is described. 2. 2. By means of the gauge the rate of growth of the height and cross section of allergic wheals may be measured and recorded. 3. 3. Typical results are presented which indicate that wheals produced by histamine iontophoresis, by stroking, and by light usually reach a maximum height within twenty minutes. This maximum height may not decrease during the next forty minutes if the intensity of stimulation is sufficient. 4. 4. The permanence of the wheal height and cross section, correlated with previous data on dye dilution and absorption during this period, indicates that a steady state is approximately maintained between the volume of plasma entering and leaving the wheal when the wheal height remains constant. With weaker stimuli the wheal height may decrease more rapidly.

Previous studies revealed the presence, in human scalp dander, of a substance to which the majority of patients with atopic dermatitis gave positive skin reactions to tests performed by one or more of the following methods: scratch, intracutaneous, local passive transfer, patch on normal skin, patch on scratch, inunction (1, 2, 3). Attempts to detect the presence of this substance in normal skin scales scraped from the general body surface met with failure (4).

Summary 1. Asthma due to extrinsic factors, to infection and to both, presents fairly characteristic clinical types each requiring a different approach for successful treatment. 2. Mixed stock vaccines have a real use and give fairly consistent results in properly selected cases of asthma. 3. In order to obtain good results, treatment of allergic manifestations must be given over long periods of time. 4. Various secondary manifestations in allergic children, such as sinusitis, urticaria, or angioneurotic edema, may usually be ignored in the expectation that successful treatment of the chief complaint will rid the child of the secondary conditions. 5. Testing each patient by scratch, intracutaneous, and passive transfer methods is well worth the time consumed even in a busy clinic. 6. The scratch test used alone is not reliable. 7. It is essential to test clinically all allergens giving positive skin reactions before judging them significant. 8. The reactivity of the skin itself varies with the individual and must be taken into consideration in reading reactions. 9. Constitutional reactions to intracutaneous tests need not occur in pediatric allergy practice.

Summary A person presumably never previously in contact with poison ivy was experimentally sensitized by the application of skin tests with an 8 per cent acetone extract of the leaf. The incubation period required for the development of this induced eczematous hypersensitivity was nine to ten days. When this same individual was patch tested after the skin had become sensitized, the time required for the development of the clinically manifest skin reaction was regularly approximately twenty-four to seventy-two hours, depending somewhat upon the concentration of the extract applied. The sensitization was of such degree that this individual, previously not reacting at forty-eight hours even to concentrations as high as 1:100, later reacted strongly to a 1:1,000,000 dilution of the extract employed. The test person in this experiment showed marked variations in reaction to the same extracts on repeated patch testing. There were (a) variations depending upon the time of test; and also (b) constant variations depending on the skin area tested. This result not only warns against drawing too definite conclusions from one or a few patch tests applied at the same time, but also serves to explain certain discrepancies of results and unexplained variations in reactions, as well as false negatives.

Resume Les travaux cliniques et experimentaux rappeles dans cette etude montrent que la stimulation de la reponse immunitaire est due a l'action propre des substances adjuvantes et non a un « effet-retardpermettant une diffusion prolongee de l'allergene. La reaction cutanee a distance du point d'injection de l'allergene, que nous avons decrite, met en evidence les modifications de la reactivite tissulaire provoquee par l'hydroxyde d'aluminium. Les injections renouvelees de 0,2 ml d'une dilution a 2 p. 1 000 d'hydroxyde d'aluminium sont bien tolerees.

1.A case illustrative of hypersensitivity to insulin protein with positive direct skin reactions and passive transfer reactions has been presented. 2.The similarity in this case between insulin allergy and serum sickness has been brought out; namely, an absence of atopic predisposition, the tendency toward a latent period, the type of symptoms, and the appearance of reagins which were not of prolonged duration. 3.Desensitization to insulin was effected, as evidenced by cessation of the patient's symptoms with continued use of various types of insulin; the inability to further demonstrate direct positive skin reactions to insulin; and the disappearance of reagins to insulin as evidenced by the inability to demonstrate further passive transfer reactions.

Guinea pigs have been exposed to suberythema doses of soft x-rays, to radiant heat of intensity about critical for producing slight burns, and to both radiations simultaneously. No erythema was produced in the skin of the animals exposed to x-rays alone and only slight burns resulted in 50 per cent of the animals exposed to heat radiation alone. The animals exposed to heat and x-radiation simultaneously developed well marked burns which healed much more slowly than those produced by heat alone.

Summary In tuberculin positive subjects there is a linear relationship between the area of skin induration and the log-dose of the intradermal tuberculin injected in a constant volume. The area of skin induration is influenced by the volume of injected intradermal fluid as well as the tuberculin dose. A mathematical form is deduced to enable these variations to be predicted. A linear relationship is found to exist between the area of skin induration and the dose of infecting organisms. A study of the results occuring with BCG organisms in human subjects and Mycobacterium tuberculosis in guinea pigs is used to compare the sensitising ability of these organisms and calibrate the skin reaction in terms of the antigenic stimulus.

Two hundred "normal" clinically nonsensitive individuals were tested intracutaneously with three reagents prepared from the honey bee. Seventy-five or 37.5 per cent gave positive reactions varying from 1 to 4 plus. One hundred and twenty-five or 62.5 per cent reacted negatively. The reactions with the dialyzed-residue fraction were more vigorous as a rule than those of the whole bee-body extract or of the dialysate. Of the 15 persons in our group who had "never" been stung by any member of the Hymenoptera, skin reactions were positive in 6 and negative in 9. Our findings indicate that almost 25 of "normal" persons exhibit a skin sensitivity to tests with serial dilutions of honeybee extract. This fact should be borne in mind when evaluating positive reactions in bee-sensitive cases before treatment is instituted.

THE voluminous literature recently accumulated on the subject of venereal lymphogranuloma contains no specific reference to involvement of the supra-anal portions of the colon by this condition. It is the purpose of this paper to describe three such cases complicating known rectal involvement: two in the transverse colon and one extensively in the descending and sigmoid. History.—Copeland, as early as 1811, suspected the venereal origin of stricture of the rectum. The condition was established as a definite pathological entity by the publication, in 1913, of a monograph by the Frenchmen, Nicolas, Durand, and Favre. It remained for Frei, in 1925, to introduce a diagnostic skin test based on a specific skin reaction which immediately placed the differential diagnosis on a sound basis. In 1930, the disease was transmitted to animals (monkeys) by intracerebral inoculations by the Swedish scientists, Hellerstrom and Wassen. Levaditi later substituted the mouse as a more suitable animal for experimentation. In ...

(1) Short lengths of the tails of mice were irradiated with X and γ radiation, so that the dose received was the same at all points throughout the irradiated portion of the tail for each radiation. (2) When thus irradiated with equal doses of X and γ radiation, measured in rontgens, the skin reactions were found to be markedly different. The ratio of effectiveness for erythema and desquamation was 1·3, and for epilation and exudation 1·6, the X radiation having the greater effect. (3) In all cases care was taken to keep the duration of irradiation so similar that variation in the time factor played no part in the results obtained. (4) Although the dose of radiation delivered throughout the whole of the irradiated portion of the tail was constant both for X and γ radiation, it does not follow that the amounts of energy released were identical. In the case of both qualities of X radiation used, elements of high atomic number, such as sulphur and calcium, give rise to strong photo-electric emission, which re...

1.1. Timothy pollen extract has been fractionated electrophoretically. 2.2. As in the case of ragweed pollen extract, there is present a major, colorless, slow-moving component which is electrophoretically homogeneous at pH 7.4. 3.3. In addition, there are also present six or more negatively charged, pigmented components which migrate more rapidly than the colorless fraction. 4.4. On direct skin tests, the slow-moving, colorless component, the fast pigments, and the intermediate pigments showed about the same skin reactivity. 5.5. On passive transfer, both the pigments and the colorless fraction also showed positive reactions. 6.6. Preliminary data obtained by means of the ultracentrifuge and diffusion techniques indicate that all of the constituents under discussion are of small molecular size compared with ordinary proteins. 7.7. The diffusion rate of the colorless fraction of timothy is very close to the analogous component of ragweed. 8.8. Questions arising connected with the immunologic specificity of the various fractions are briefly discussed.

Rabbits given single injections of endotoxin and then skin-tested with endotoxin from 1 day to 1 month later exhibit accelerated skin reactions resembling the Arthus phenomenon. Injection of one endotoxin alters the subsequent reactivity of rabbits to other endotoxins as well. The state of altered reactivity can be transferred with serum, and appears to be related to the presence of non-precipitating cross-reactive antibody, rather than to specific precipitating antibody.

The mites in a large number of dust samples from houses of patients with bronchial asthma were identified and counted: the most common species was Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, and it was particularly abundant in mattress dust. 94% of the house-dust-sensitive patients gave skin reactions to D. pteronyssinus extracts and, to a lesser extent, to extracts of other species. Asthma patients who were negative to house dust were negative to D. pteronyssinus. Threshold dilutions giving reactions in 200 patients sensitive to D. pteronyssinus were about 10 -6 . In 22 patients dust from mattresses and living-rooms was tested by counting the numbers of D. pteronyssinus and by measuring the skin reactions to 1% extracts of the dusts: the mite-count was much higher in mattress dust and skin reactions to mattress-dust extracts tended to be greater.

0 NE of the unsolved problems of inhalant allergy is that of accurate measurement of the varying amounts of antigenic material in the air. The answer to this question is of basic importance in the interpretation and evaluation of skin reactions and in the effective employment of air-borne allergens in treatment. The object of this paper is to appraise the accumulated results of atmospheric pollen and fungus spore research, to scrutinize the recently suggested methods for interpreting these findings and, if possible, to introduce simpler and more accurate concepts. Seventy-five years ago Blackleyl sensed the need of quantitative information on aerial pollen incidence. He sought diligently for a met,hod of determining the number of pollen grains in a given volume of outdoor air. But after several fruitless experiments with various types of sampling apparatus, he discarded the volumetric method for the gravity slide method which has been widely used during the past two decades. All agree that the data which may be obtained from uniformly exposed gravity slides by counting the particles caught on a unit slide area are highly satisfactory when dealing with the pollen of a single botanical species-common ragweed, for example. In an investigation covering species other than ragweed, the unit area figures would still be significant, provided all pollen particles under investigation were approximately the same size and had the same rate of fall. But since the widely differing size and surface characters of the various air-borne pollens cause appreciable differences in their rate of fall, it has long been believed that figures obtained by this method give a very inaccurate idea of the relative atmospheric contamination by pollens of various sizes. With this concept has come the assumption that all inaccuracies of statement can be avoided by determining the actual number of each kind of particle suspended in a given volume of outdoor air, as Blackley attempted to do. Using Stokes’ law, Scheppegrell* derived a formula and worked out tables for direct conversion of gravity slide figures into volumetric figures, i.e., the number of pollen grains of any species per cubic yard

Irradiation of pig skin was carried out with surface applicators containing radium (35 rads/hr.) and californium 252 (12–13 rads/hr.). Observations were made over a 100-day period and skin reactions scored. The dose required to produce a moist reaction which did not heal within fifty days was 8,400 rads for radium and 1,725 rads for californium; this yielded an RBE of 4.9. The results indicate very little recovery or repopulation during irradiation by californium 252.

The effectiveness of fast neutron therapy was tested where it was unlikely to show any advantage relative to conventional X rays, i.e. on a mouse mammary tumour which contains radioresistant hypoxic cells, but which reoxygenates extensively after a large X-ray dose. The therapeutic effects were estimated by comparing the degree of early skin reaction associated with a standard frequency of local tumour control assessed at 150 days. Five and nine fractions of X rays or fast neutrons were given at the expected optimum spacing for re-oxygenation after X rays. Single doses were also used. Five fractions of X rays given in nine days were indeed found to be as effective as either of the fractionated neutron treatments, which were closely similar to each other, but nine fractions of X rays in 18 days were considerably less effective. These results suggest that X rays can be made as effective as fast neutrons, by a sharply optimal choice of fractionation dose and interval. However, to make this choice re...

An individual working in laser research was made reactive to impacts of low energy normal mode ruby laser. The energy level at the beginning of the experiments was 100 joules/cm 2 . His minimal reactive dose was found to be 38 joules/cm 2 . Partial inhibition to the delayed papular response of his laser skin reaction was done by topical applications of 0.2 and 0.025% fluocinolone acetonide, but not by 0.01% fluocinolone acetonide. Occlusive dressings with 0.01% fluocinolone acetonide, 0.4 mgs. and 0.1 mgs. of fluorandrenolone acetonide per 100 square centimeters of an occlusive tape were also effective. The failure of inhibition of the petechial phase of the delayed inflammatory response to the laser is not explained.

Summary and Discussion The morphology exhibited in the sections of arthropod bite reactions permits a dynamic interpretation. In the search for the blood meal, the biting mechanism of the arthropod appears to penetrate through the epidermis with minimal difficulty. Some spreading factor in the saliva is suggested by the rapid spread of the tissue reaction. The perivascular phases of the reaction also suggest a rapid vascular transportation of the material injected. The sensitivity of an individual to the bite of a given arthropod influences the intensity of the inflammatory response. However, an individual may be sensitive to one arthropod and insensitive to the bites of others. The insensitive individual who develops no clinical bite reaction may be bitten without being aware of it. The histological studies of Boltz (1951) of the skin reactions following injections of needle puncture show that the changes in the skin following a bite by an arthropod is not one of simple “mechanical” puncture even in a non-reactive individual. The persistent late nodular response may be due to the intrinsic nature of the bite (including retained cuticular fragments?) or to a neurodermatitic response secondary to the scratch reaction to itching. Histopathologic methods are valuable in the study of bite reactions. Improvements such as vacuum freeze drying technics and histochemical studies may permit more detailed studies of the variations in the cellular response of the individual to the bites of arthropods. With better fixation technics it may be possible to pick up fine bodies retained after the insect bite. Improvement in the technic of study of the biting parts in situ, will make possible observations relating to the effect of the artificially induced retention of a piece of the biting apparatus within the skin. It is also possible that isotopic studies with other isotopes and more refined autoradiographic technics may enable us to follow the path of the bite more accurately. Progress in the study of the peripheral mechanisms of reaction of Compound F deposited locally may also help in the analysis of the bite reaction. With the bite reaction of an individual determined, it should then be possible to study in detail local and systemic factors which may modify some parts of the bite reaction, as for example, the vascular response, the inflammatory cell response, the degree of pruritus, additive local trauma, etc.

IT has been indicated that the amount of recovery from radiation effects of tissues exposed to daily fractionated doses of radiation is a more or less constant factor for each day. Reisner (1), and Quimby and MacComb (2, 3) have measured experimentally the daily potency of this recovery factor for skin up to a period of 30 days, and their figures more accurately represent the quantitative values of this recovery factor than any hitherto published. The quoted values of the recovery factor after approximately the first week have a somewhat diminished significance because, with increased protraction of fractionated doses of radiation, comes an increase in the variation of individual skin reactions. After approximately the third week of daily treatments, new phenomena begin to manifest themselves and divide the period of treatment into two types of phases, the destructive phase and the healing phase. These phenomena seem to be governed by the healing process, a mechanism which appears to be distinct from the ...

The question whether antihistamines influence non-anaphylactic or non-atopic skin reactions, i.e. delayed tuberculin type and eczamatous reactions, is still controversial.