Asthma: A Synthesis Involving Primitive Speech, Organism and Insecurity

Abstract

Historical BackgroundAsthma is an illness which has puzzled our profession since earliest times. Each generation has based its concept of aetiology on current concepts of disease, so that delving into its history shows a colourful pattern of widely conflicting views.Early in this century Osler (1910) is in favour of a nervous cause, though he pays little attention to treatment on psychological lines. After that date there is a procession of changing viewpoints.In the second decade, anaphylactics, according to Conner (1917), have cracked the hard core of the aetiological riddle, but Eppinger and Hess (1917), writing of vagotonia, correlate this with the asthmatic attack.Freeman (1921) writes of precipitating nervous reflexes. Bray (1934) is convinced that the allergist holds the key to solution. There is emphasis on allergic diathesis and an hereditary asthmatic constitution.Wittkower (1935) showed that asthma might have a purely psychological conditioning. Since that time, belief in the importance of the psychological factor is still gaining ground.The theme of the present communication arose from research of Bostock and Shackleton (1951, 1952) on the aetiology of enuresis. There emerged the concept of premature toilet training interfering with later development of urinary control. It suggested that a study of asthma in its early stages might show an interference in the normal process of respiratory and speech maturation.As will be shown, there is a similarity, although the mechanism is more complicated.