ASTHMA DUE TO A FUNGUS— ALTERNARIA

Abstract

Cooke¹was probably the first to emphasize the importance of dust as a cause of asthma. In 1922 he reported that in 327 cases of asthma a reaction to dust of diagnostic importance was found in 109, or 33 per cent. He found the activity of the dust was diminished when it was heated at 100 C. in a sealed tube and was destroyed when it was boiled in an open vessel. He was unable to correlate this reaction in his patients with their sensitization to known constituents of dust. He states in his conclusions: "The new procedure of testing dust extracts... has shown the presence of a substance in common house dusts which is an important factor but the nature and source of which are as yet unknown." Cooke's observations on the frequency of dust sensitiveness in asthma have been abundantly confirmed. McLaughlin²reported that, of 1,186