Food or Poison? (Nov, 1936)

Apparently soy milk was already on the market in 1936. From the bottom of the third page: “A milk substitute made from soy beans which can be digested by patients who are upset by ordinary milk is now on the market…

Food or Poison?

Physicians Must Turn Detectives To Find the Causes of Ailments Produced by Eating, Breathing, Or Touching Common Substances By Frederic Damrau, M. D.




If eggs make you break out in a rash, if strawberries give you hives, if cats set you sneezing, you are allergic. Between 10,000.000 and 15,000,000 Americans, it is estimated, are allergic to something.

Every time a boy who lives in Brooklyn, N. Y., chews gum, he starts to cough and sneeze. He is sensitive to chicle. Every time a girl in Chicago, Ill., smells chrysanthemums, her eyes puff up. She is allergic to the flower’s pollen. Every time a man in the South puts catchup on his steak, he chokes and gasps for breath.

He is affected by tomatoes in any form. Every time a woman in St. Louis, Mo., eats an onion, she gets blue spots on her skin. Every timeâ€”but the list goes on indefinitely.

I have known people allergic to such familiar things as wall paper, Christmas trees, sauerkraut, rubber, red plums, seed corn, asters, rice, dates, ginger ale, fly-specks, corn silk. I have heard of a butcher allergic to mutton; a florist sensitive to primroses; a carpenter affected by wood dust. And medical research is continually adding’ new trouble makers to the list.




Even more astonishing cases are familiar to medical men. Several patients have proved so sensitive to eggs that meat from a hen caused them to break out in a rash while meat from a rooster gave them no trouble. Infinitesimal traces of egg in the hen’s meat were responsible. Likewise, meat from a cow may upset a patient violently allergic to milk, while beef from a steer proves harmless.

So sensitive was one patient to buckwheat that a single drop of honey made by bees after visiting buckwheat flowers would produce severe abdominal pains.




By means of the scratch test, one doctor found that an unfortunate four-year-old child was allergic to twenty-eight different things. She suffered from hay fever, asthma, hives, and a constantly upset stomach, all caused by the everyday substances that were poison to her system. They included potatoes, eggs, salmon, cod fish, mustard, green peppers, black pepper, chicken feathers, cattle hair, ragweed pollen, cockle-burs, and aspirin.

Recently, the famous Richmond, Va., allergist, Dr. Warren T. Vaughan, announced a new and more sensitive test for foods that cause trouble, based on the pio neer work of the French scientist, Dr. F. Widal. After a twelve-hour fast, the patient dines on the suspected food. Then, blood samples, taken at half-hour intervals, go under the microscope. If the food is the trouble maker, there will be a noticeable decrease in the number of white corpuscles in the blood.


Strangely enough, it is often the most wholesome foods that cause the most trouble. Eggs, wheat, and milk are, in that order, first on the list of trouble makers. Also, the allergy victim rarely dislikes the food that makes him sickâ€”and oftentimes it is his favorite dish!

If you ask a specialist to explain just what such a food does in the system, he will be hard put to answer. Someone once asked Thomas A. Edison for a definition of electricity. He replied that any schoolboy could give as good a definition as he could. He knew what electricity does but not what it is. So with allergy. We know its effects, but much concerning how the effects are produced is shrouded in mystery. Two national groups, the Association for the Study of Allergy and the Society for the Study of Asthma and Allied Conditions, are now seeking to penetrate these mysteries.

ONE widely accepted theory is that the reaction is caused by foreign substances reaching the blood stream. The patient’s system has built up a standing army of tiny bodies in the blood to fight this particular substance. When more of it is introduced, many specialists believe, these bodies go into action so quickly that the health of the patient is upset.

This theory that the reaction takes place in the blood stream would explain an occurrence in an eastern hospital that reads, at first glance, like a page from some Baron Munchausen of medicine.




Cosmeticsâ€”face powders, lip sticks, perfumes, hair lotions, soaps,â€”often act as poisons to sensitive persons. I remember one case in which a wealthy woman traveled thousands of miles,â€”to California, Florida, Africa,â€” in search of a climate that would relieve her asthma. Then, she found she was carrying her asthma wherever she went,â€”in her powder compact. She was allergic to orris root, one of the ingredients in the powder she used.



To aid thousands of persons who are allergic to orris root, a Chicago manufacturer has put on the market a powder free from the troublesome substance. This same company is turning out a complete line of non-allergic cosmetics which are sold from coast to coast.


In Massachusetts, a large furniture factory is doing a flourishing business supplying special chairs, beds, and sofas to buyers who are allergic to feathers and animal hairs. Large department stores throughout the United States are also selling specially designed covers that slip on over chairs and sofas to prevent dust from the interior from reaching the air.


A New York woman went to an oculist to be fitted with new glasses. On her way home, she noticed that people were turning and staring at her as they went by. When she glanced in the mirror, she understood the reason. Across each cheek was a huge, cherry-red welt. The composition used in the frames of the spectacles evidently contained some element to which her system was allergic.

Imagine the amazement of another eastern woman when her upper lip began to swell as soon as she started playing the flute in an orchestra of which she was a member! By the end of the concert, it was puffed up as though a bee had stung it. That night, the swelling went down. But the next day, when she started to practice, it puffed up again. Every time she put the flute to her mouth, her upper lip began to swell!



SCIENCE can give a definite answer. It is: No. After studying the family histories of 250 allergic children and 315 normal ones, Dr. Bret Ratner, professor of children’s diseases at New York University College of Medicine, recently reported that he found no more allergic parents in the first group than in the second.



1 comment
  1. Blurgle says: April 6, 20085:13 pm

    And now there are something like four times more people allergic to soy than to dairy.

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