In cases of hypersensitiveness to cold the condition is not invariably allergic, i. e., based on an antigen-antibody reaction.
Since Duke1 first called attention to physical agents as the cause of such conditions as urticaria in certain cases, extensive literature on the pathogenesis of hypersensitiveness to cold has appeared. Some authors —including Harris, Lewis and Vaughan; Lehner, Rajka and Török; Prieto, and Bernstein—have adduced all the evidence necessary to demonstrate allergy in their cases. On the other hand, many—including Biberstein, W. Jadassohn and Schaaf and Urbach and Fasal—have never succeeded in performing the passive transfer of this hypersensitiveness and so were never able to prove that the conditions in their cases were based on allergy.
On the basis of the entire pertinent literature and of our own findings (50 cases studied by 1 of us [E. U.] during the past fifteen years and previously reported2 in part), we