Urticaria is a vexing problem, to the patient who teachers who have stimulated my interest and helped suffers from the annoying pruritus and the fear oflife­ me to understand the basic and clinical aspects of mast threatening reactions, to the physician who faces the cell-related problems is long. I would like to specifi­ challenge to find the cause of the eruption and to cally mention J.N. Fink during medical school train­ control the symptomatology, and to the scientist who ing in Milwaukee, J.R. Pomeranz and R.W. Belcher is asked to explain the process that elicits tissue during dermatology residency in Cleveland, L.M. swelling at the cellular and molecular levels. Lichtenstein and P. Norman during a research fellow­ The last thorough treatise on urticaria was the ship at the Department of Clinical Immunology and superb monograph by R. P. Warin and R.H. Champion, Allergy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and published more than a decade ago. Since then, there E. Macher at the University Clinics in Miinster where have been major advances in the field. This holds much of what I have learned in the past could be particularly for the clinical aspects of anaphylactoid broadened through further basic research and clinical reactions, the urticarial vasculitis syndrome, and the experience.