VICTIMS OF HAYFEVER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 78, Issue 7016, 7 February 1949, Page 3

VICTIMS OF HAYFEVER

ALLERGIC TO CERTAIN POLLENBEARING PLANTS REMEDIES VARY IN THEIR EFFECTS Swollen and inflamed eyes and nose, uncontrolled tears and spontaneous sneezing, that is the miserable lot of millions of hayfever victims. Pollen from flowers has long been known to be the cause of hayfever. But, the curious thing is that the great majority of sufferers are city-dwellers, rather than the farmers that ar6 subjected to the greatest dosages of pollen. A botanist who has devoted much of his lifetime to a study of the subject is Dr Roger P. Wodehouse. In 1945, he published a book classifying the roguish plants whose pollen disturbs man’s peace. Such study has also removed suspicion from many innocent plants. The first seasonal sneeze-causers are the blooming grasses and the narrow-leaved plantain.

Some people have thought that all pollen-bearing plants cause hayfever; but this is not true. The conifers, pines, spruces, firs, etc., as a group produce great quantities of pollen, but only the junipers and cypresses are troublemakers. Cattails and sedges also shed forth an abundance of pollen, but they do not cause hayfever like the knavish narrowleaved plantain. About a half-dozen families of herbaceous plants, such as the chenopods, pigweeds, docks, plantains, certain grasses, and, of course, ragweeds, together with about eight families of trees, including ashes, birches and beeches, cause practically all the misery suffered by the millions of hay-fever Victims. Older remedies given for relief of hay-fever included the succinimide of mercury, arsenic, iodine, bromide, and other nerve-suppressing drugs. Serums have been tried with poor results. Continued research by pharmacologists and botanists have led to different conclusions as to the cause, with the result that different remedies have of late been advanced. There seems to be a relation between hayfever and other ailments, like asthma, migraine and hives, that are classified as allergies. The human body contains a chemical substance called “histamine”, large quantities of which in cases of allergy are released, which in turn causes the irritation of membrane tissues of the nose lungs and eyes. Based on this information, chemists have endeavoured to find agencies that will neutralise or counteract the histamine. In 1945 it was announced that one to six injections of ethplene disulphonate would relieve hayfever suffering for six to 18 months. In April, 1946, “benadryl” was announced as a cure for hayfever. Chemically it is beta-dimethyl-aminoethyl-belzhy^. yl ether hydrochloride. Another anti-histamine chemical is pribenzamine hydrochloride. Still another is called “anthallan”. But all of these chemicals are still in the experimental stage, with hayfever sufferers used as guinea pigs. Anthallan, it is claimed, gives “complete recovery” to 37%, with 70 to 99% recovery for another 41% of the patients. After testing pyribenzamine on a thousand individuals it was said to be “a useful palliative” for about 50% of cases. Another approach to the problem of relieving the distress of hayfever is to up-root and destroy the pollenbearing plants that produce the allergy. This has been undertaken by Borne of the larger communities in U.S.A.