Historical perspectives of allergy and immunology and allergen immunotherapy

Abstract

During my youth, I had my first encounter with the specialty of allergy while assisting my physician-father, an allergist/immunologist, in preparing allergen extracts from ragweed pollen and house dust. These extracts were used for skin testing and subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) in his clinical practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was a common practice before commercial extracts were universally available in the United States. My father was initially trained as a family practitioner and later, after theWorldWar II, took an apprenticeship in allergy/immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thereafter, he devoted his entire life to thefield. Hewas the founding father of the Pennsylvania Allergy & Asthma Association and an active member of both the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the AmericanAcademyofAllergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) and usually had an abstract or two to present at their annual meetings. I vividly remember attending these meetings with my 2 brothers: my older brother, Stephen Daniel Lockey, a practicing allergist/immunologist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and my younger brother, James Edward Lockey, a pulmonary/occupational physician and academicianat theUniversityofCincinnati,Ohio. Training in the specialtywas not formalized until 1971.1 Figure 1 is a picture of my late father and his charge nurse, Ms. Sarah Landis, taken in the early 1950s. While attending Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania, I had the privilege of participating in immunologic research in a basic research laboratory, where I became fascinated with the world of immunology, an area of special interest to 2 of my professors, Irving Finger, PhD, and Mel Santer, PhD. I vividly remember plating out Petri plates with agar gel, cutting and aspirating the wells, and then applying antigen and serum containing antibodies prepared in rabbits for Ouchterlony double-diffusion studies. Likewise, similar studies were performed in capillary tubes. I also remember how