MYSTERIOUS SNEEZE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 12078, 18 October 1933, Page 3

MYSTERIOUS SNEEZE

PEOPLE AYIIO CANNOT STOP Here is some curious news about sneezing, given to a representative of the “Sunday Express' 5 at a nose and throat Hospital, and by a inmous specialist in of the nose and ear. According to an official of the. hospital, approximately 100 patients are treated every year for incessant sneezing. The specialist gave it as bis opinion that about 90 people die in a year in England from accidents resulting from a- sneeze. “Frequently they break blood vessels and injure the brain.” bo said. “An occasionally a violent sneeze will cause spinal or internal injury,”

Some bacteriologists Kdievc that incessant sneezing is the result- of. 0 germ .similar to that of sleepy sickness, but- this is by 110 means generally accepted. The longest- period .1 have known a snoozing spasm to last was seven days. The patient wa,s a railway porter, and the spasm finally cured itself. No treatment seemed to arrest it. In my experience men are sneezers rather, than women. Children do not appear to be similarly affected. No one knows the cause of violent- .sneezing. Frequently it -appears to be psychological.

“For instance, I ’ remember the case of a man who was alfected by the colour, red. It was enough for him t-o pass a pillar-box in. the street to bring on a paroxysm. A pot of geraniums or a lobster was enough to jstart a painful and violent- attack. He was under observation for some time, but t-he cause was never, discovered. A sufferer from hay lever tells me that the -sight- of a haystack on tbo screen at a cinema, is enough to start him sneezing. An then there is the case of Henry Hutchinson, who baffled the- doctors with an agonsing chronic headache, lasting 10 years. He wa-s cured by .a- paroxysm of isneezing, which dislodged a- piece of steel an inch and a -half long from tho nose. Sudden strong sunlight makes nearly every -person sneeze, though no one knows exactly why. \Uolent sneezing is .sometimes tho precursor of infantile paralysis and meningitis. Acute spasms should never, be disregarded.”