Sir,

You published on December 25th, 1926 (p. 1221), an article by myself on "Instinct and functioning in health and disease," and your interesting leading article on "The curability of asthma" on April 27th (p. 776) induces me to recall it to the minds of your readers. In it I endeavoured to give a short account of what I consider to, be the epochmaking Work of F. M. Alexander; to show that, according to his views, man, guided largely by the instinct of his tree dwelling ancestors, fails to function to the best advantage in his modern environment, and particularly in a sedentary environment; that disease is associated with wrong functioning; and that, incidentally, disease, or at least, symptoms of disease, disappear or tend to disappear with improvement in functioning.

Your article encourages me to repeat this. From observation I have been driven to the conclusion that asthma in cases I have observed was associated with bad functioning ­ defective methods of sitting, walking, standing, breathing, etc. ­ and that asthma, or at least the symptoms associated with asthma, disappeared in process as improved functioning was acquired. If these observations could be repeated so to enable a generalization to be established ­ and, a priori, the possibility of such generalization is likely ­ then a "cure" of asthma can confidently be expected. Such cure would be real one, for it would mean the removal of the primary and not the secondary cause of the disease.

I have "cured" cases of asthma by removal of spurs from nasal septa, but, as you point out in your leading article, such "cures" are not real ones since the underlying conditions, which irritation from a nasal source tends to precipitate in the form of an attack of asthma, remain. No one recognize this more than I, and it is because I do recognize it that I urged and again urge on the medical profession the investigation of methods which seem to me to have at least some relation to a real cure in this, as in other conditions of disease.

I am, etc.
Peter Macdonald
York, April 28th