How do you recognize allergy?

A suggested basic approach to the diagnosis of allergic diseases, which involves the characteristics of allergic diseases themselves, is presented. Using these characteristics as basic guidelines in investigation, not only should the condition be diagnosed but main cause or causes and triggering factors should be demonstrated in individual patients. Investigational procedures ranging from history, and including simple skin tests and more sophisticated immunological investigations, are briefly analyzed and it is stressed that if a really adequate allergic investigation of all patients with suspect allergic disease is carried out in an effort to demonstrate and subsequently control all causes and triggering factors, then development of chronic disease, sometimes intractible to our standard methods of therapy, could well be prevented in many cases.