The common form of asthma.
A type of asthma mainly caused by an allergen or by exertion.
Form of airway constriction and irritability characterized by episodic dyspnea and bronchial spasm.
Allergic asthma; a common form of asthma due to hypersensitivity to an allergen.
Asthma caused by a spasm of the smaller divisions of the air tubes or bronchi, with the pouring out of large quantities of sputum. It is usually due to hypersensitivity to an allergen combined with a psychological disturbance. Asthmatic people are supersensitive and frequently capable of a high degree of intellectual development. They have, in fact, the artistic type of temperament. One can explain the asthma syndrome by comparing the asthmatic patient to a loaded pistol with a hair trigger; the explosion of the pistol being the asthma attack. The triggering off may be caused by an emotional upset, an allergen to which the individual is highly sensitive, or to the onset of an infection. One can also use as an analogy a brick wall built of three types of bricks: nerve bricks, consisting of worry or emotion; allergen bricks, consisting of allergens of dust, food, or pollen; and germ bricks, consisting of infection such as a cold. When the wall reaches a certain height—and regardless of whether it is composed of one type of brick or all three types—the attack develops. The patient often protests that he has not been anxious or worried but has caught a cold; or he may say that he has been worried by something at home or at work; or, again, for this particular attack he blames some food or dust. Therefore before treatment of bronchial asthma can be attempted, the patient must be reviewed in his entirety. His nervous make-up, his diet, the conditions of his home for dust, and his resistance to infections all have to be considered, and it is only after this complex picture has been broken down and assessed that the doctor can decide the treatment best calculated to relieve or cure.