In a previous paper1 we discussed the dermal-respiratory aspect of allergy in a series of allergic infants and children. We are here concerned chiefly with an appraisal of the skin tests in these cases. The cases to be described consist of 114 infants and children all of whom had eczema when they were first seen. These include 42 infants (under 2 years) with eczema alone, 38 children with eczema alone, and 34 infants and children with eczema and a complicating respiratory allergy.
Other publications in the literature have reported on skin test findings. We believe that our study is unique in the sense that each case was tested with at least 350 different proteins. Further, where it was difficult to interpret results, tests were repeated.
For the most part the tests were performed by the scratch method. Early in the study the intradermal method was not employed in all