STRANGE SENSITIVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 13

STRANGE SENSITIVES.

For most of ns the usual allowance of five senses is quite sufficient —sometimes, perhaps, more than enough; but there are many people more liberally endowed who have what may he called a “ sixth sense ” added to the normal five. They are known to medical science as “ sensitives ” —people who are peculiarly and often painfully sensitive to objects which have no effect on the normal person.

A familiar form-of th : s sensitiveness is the curious effect certain foods have on some people. It is more literally true than is generally realised that “ what is one man’s food is another man’s poison,” writes a ’ doctor in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. Thus, to one man an egg is a palatable and nourishing food;- to another it is absolute poison. One man may eat a hen’s egg with enjoyment and impunity, while a duck’s egg will bring on an acute , attack of asthma. Another can eat and enjoy a duck’s egg, while a hen’s egg will inevitably make him very ill. Some cannot eat a strawberry without immediate skin trouble. Oysters are a delectable food to some and poison to others. And the same is true of a wide range of foods, such as mushrooms, nuts, game, and fish; and even such apparently innocent and natural fare as milk, butter, .and cheese. Such sensitiveness as this, however strange, is quite commonplace. Happily, much rarer, though much stronger, is sensitiveness to such objects as silk and horsehair. There are people to whom a solitary horsehair is an object of danger, and others who cannot touch silk, without being alarmingly ill. A typical story is that of a girl who was tortured night and day by asthma when living in her London home. It was observed, however, that when she paid a visit to an aunt in the country the asthma completely left her. It was naturally thought that the cure was duo \ to the country air, and it was decided that the girl should live with her aunt. I One day she took a lesson in horseriding, which was immediately followed by an attack of asthma of so alarming a nature that a London physician was summoned to attend her. Fortunately, the physician had made a study of what are known as “ allergens ” —objects to which certain people are peculiarly sensitive —and he quickly decided that it was a car,e of “ horse asthma.” , • To satisfy himself he applied a single horsehair to a slight scratch on the girl’s arm, when, as he fully expected, the skin around the scratch at once became inflamed. The secret, was then quickly revealed. It was found that the mattress on which the, girl had slept at her London home wap stuffed with horsehair, and that in her aunt’s home with feathers. . • Hay fever is, of course, a very common type of this sensitiveness.