The relationship of vitamin C to hypersensitiveness has been the subject of numerous investigations in experimental animals, with conflicting and inconclusive results. The few studies of ascorbic acid and human hypersensitivity have likewise yielded divergent findings. Walzer,1 in a recent review, concluded that no definite role for vitamin C in the immunologic mechanism of hypersensitiveness had as yet been established.
Our interest in this subject was stimulated during a study of vitamin C nutrition in the clinic and hospital population when we noted that a number of patients with bronchial asthma showed a low level of ascorbic acid in the blood plasma. Several reports of the use of ascorbic acid in the treatment of bronchial asthma have appeared, but no studies have been made of the state of vitamin C nutrition prior to therapy. Hochwald2 found that ascorbic acid administered regularly was valuable in preventing symptoms of bronchial