THE BASIC CONCEPTS OF ALLERGIES: CASE OF CHEMICAL SUSCEPTIBILITY WITH “PSYCHOSIS”
Denise Miller was the manager of a large retail store. She worked in the business office of that store, in the rear of the building, adjacent to the parking lot. When she sat near an open window and worked, she inevitably became depressed. The source of her problem was located in the cars and busses which spewed their exhausts in the direction of her office all day long. Since she could not change her place of employment, she was able to get a good deal of relief simply by keeping the windows shut and sitting some distance away from them.
One winter she took her vacation in Florida. Staying with relatives, she was given a big room, with the bed away from the walls of the room. She had no problem. But during the last two days of her stay, other relatives came to visit, and so she was moved into a smaller room with the bed wedged in one corner. The walls of this room, as well as the rest of the house, had been painted not long before, and Miss Miller began to react.
She hallucinated, seeing purple frogs hopping around her room. A lion sat on the foot of her bed and scared her out of her wits. In desperation, she decided to go home. On the Twentieth Century Limited to New York, she later said, she shared her bed with a gorilla. She was very upset, since every time she tried to get to sleep, the gorilla’s arms enfolded her!
Tests revealed that these strange symptoms were brought on by exposure to fresh paint, which was part of her overall susceptibility to many chemicals. By avoiding such exposure, she was able to maintain relatively good health.
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