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This text on childhood allergic disease appears to this reviewer to be of uneven quality. The chapter on drugs currently in use in treating allergic disease—a brief Pharmacopeia—is well done and will be useful to many who care for allergic patients.
On the other hand, the author's discussion of the present position of injection therapy in caring for these patients appears ambivalent. In one chapter it is advised as a means of preventing hay fever from developing into asthma while in another, the author's well known doubts concerning the efficacy of injection therapy are again presented.
The matter of food allergy is also unevenly treated. The fallibility of skin tests is correctly pointed out, but how one should proceed with the alternative test—trial dieting—is poorly presented. Instructions to parents fail to make clear whether milk should be boiled for 20 minutes, replaced by ice cream, or omitted entirely—although