HAY FEVER

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 December 1937, Page 12

HAY FEVER

SCIENCE FIGHTS IT. I - Spring (says a writer in an Australian exchange) has tinted the trees and fields with its thousand shades of green, and lavished the full wealth of its palette on the gardens. Roses open their petals to the sun. Stocks wave their fragrant heads and lily of the valley shelters timidly beneath old cherry pie. And men sneeze! It is the price thousands pay for the beauty and colour of the Spring. It takes other forms—asthma, catarrh—and it makes the Spring and Summer misery for a remarkably large proportion of the populationAge seems to have little bearing on its incidence. Many of the Summer colds of little cihldren are unrecognised hay fever. Every Spring and Summer it comes

as certainly as the baker’s bills. Thousands of pounds cross the counters of chemists’ shops for sprays, tablets and ointments for the “relief of, hay fever.” Few claim to cure it. Doctors, skin-test and inoculate people

against it, and own to somewhat disappointing results. In England people submit themselves to copper or zinc ironisation of the nasal passages, and in the United States scores of serums are used. And people go on sneezing.

Hay fever is one of a number of interesting and almost amusing aller-

gies, an allergy being an idiosyncrasy in the reaction of the body to foods, pollens, smells, or drugs. Most of us know people who are “poisoned” by pineapple or mushrooms, or get a rash if they eat strawberries. They are allergic to those things and their bodies fly into a fit of physical tantrums if they eat them. But it is not necessary to eat things to suffer an allergic reaction. The mere presence, perhaps unknown, of a mouse or cat has caused persons who are allergic to mice and cats to faint.

Some people are allergic (anaphy-

lactic, if you prefer the one guinea word to the half-guinea word) to such simple things as fish glue, silk, wool,

feathers and horses. Many of them are born that way, but often the condition develops after a severe nervous strain or shock. One woman who never let a day pass

without eating one or two apples found, after the birth of her first child, that she was so sensitive to

apple “poisoning” that she could not pass through an apple orchard without fainting. And it had nothing to do with imagination. A doctor’s young son developed bronchitis nearly every time he went away from home to stay with friends. The doctor suspected house dust, gave the boy a skin test, got a positive result and set up an immunity by injections.

Sufferers from hay fever are persons who are allergic, or anaphylactic (that will be one guinea, please!) to flowers, grasses, pollens, and such things. It is difficult to define where hay fever ends and asthma, catarrh, and other allergic conditions begin. Some people who have v never halfsneezed their heads off say that it is all imagination, ‘but they do not try to explain why a soundly-sleeping person suddenly awakens in a paroxysm of sneezing, with nasal passages tingling irritably, eyes watering, and the inner tubes of the ear itching almost intolerably. A young woman scientist, who.knew that hay fever was not imaginary, concluded that in the stiller air of the

night the pollens and offending dusts settled toward the ground- By morning the layer reached its densest and became too much for sleep. Investiga-

tions convinced her that between about 7 a-m. and 9 or 9.30 a.m. was the most trying period for hay fever victims. The personal experience of many agrees with her conclusion.

SUDDEN ATTACKS,

At the recent Royal Show at Flem-

ington a man was looking at the poultry in the poultry pavilion. He was perfectly comfortable until an attendant began giving the birds chopped grass and greenstuffs. At once he developed' all the most miserable early symptoms of a cold in the , head. But it was just good old plain

3 hay fever. ’ Sudden draughts of cold air will . giye hay fever to some people. A Melbourne man found that his daily dose r invariably began as soon as he set foot on a concrete path not far from , his home. He tried walking to the ' tram down the other side of the street —on asphalt—and he lost his hay

fever. The concrete had' reflected the strong light from the sun into his eyes, and had started' his sneezing. Inoculation against the allergens which doctors believe cause hay fever has been studied very thoroughly in other parts of the world and in Australia. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories at Parkville have prepared a number of extracts of those things which, it is believed, cause hay fever or an allergic condition. The patient is tested by making a series of light scratches on the skin of his arm and rubbing the various extracts into the scratches- If, in half an hour, he shows a positive reaction, the doctor concludes that he is sensitive to that particular thing.

things to which people may be allergic, those things which cause hay fever or asthma, or catarrh, or even more serious reactions, is indicated by the variety of extracts prepared at the laboartories at Parkville. They include. in the most interesting class, cat. hair, dog hair, cattle hair, pig hair, and goat hair, duck feathers, goose feathers, and hen feathers, horse dander, rabbit fur, and sheep’s wool, bee extract, fish glue, house

(lust, insectibane, kapok, linseed, orris I root, wheat chaff, and lucerne chaff. In the food class are almond, apple, banana, barley, bean, beef, Brazil nut, cabbage, carrot, celery, coffee, eggwhite, walnut, fowl, honey, lamb, milk, oatmeal, onion, orange, Ovo mucoid, pea, peanut, pepper, pork, potato, rice, tea, tomato, wheat flour, and whiting. And in the grass and flower class are many grasses, broom cosmos, dahlia hawthorn. Iceland' poppy, maize, pine, pepper tree, privet, sunflower, sweet pea, wattle, wheat, and oats.

Some day.a considerate public will not carry the more highly-scented flowers on trams and trains, and the beautiful lady who is going to occupy seat 816 in the dress circle will think twice before using the perfume which she considers so, so angelic, and which the man or woman who is going to occupy 817 will find so, so unbearably irritating. She might learn that the powder

which she uses so prodigally at every interval contains orris root, a prime offender. Gradually the large field of innocent irritants is gaining a complementary field' of non-irritants. Science is making surprising discoveries about simple things, and is tracing allergic troubles in some people to articles as apparently harmless as adhesive plaster, blotting paper, and office pastes There is consolation in the fact that allergic people are less susceptible to other ailments than those who can swallow anything or sniff the fragrance of a rose and get away with it-

And there is this, too. Doctors say that allergic idiosynrasies diminish as their victims grow older. Cheer up! Like married life, the first 50 years are the worst.