Hay fever : its causes, treatment, and effective prevention : experimental researches / by Chas. Harrison Blackley.

Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hay fever : its causes, treatment, and effective prevention : experimental researches / by Chas. Harrison Blackley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of the season I did not confine myself to the house, but walked out daily, occasionally in Kew Gardens, and was surrounded by many hundreds of acres of hay-grass, in all different states; yet, except during the few hot days, when I suffered as usual, my complaint was in a much less degree than the average. But although I think the evidence, so far as respects myself, to be quite decisive, I acknowledge that I have received accounts from various quarters of individuals who have felt, no doubt, that the complaint was brought on by the effluvium from hay, and was relieved or prevented by avoiding this effluvium. I will not venture to assert that this opinion is incorrect, but I believe that in most cases we may explain the facts more naturally by supposing that the patients, at the time when they conceived themselves to be inhaling the effluvium from hay, were also exposed to heated air or sunshine, or had been using bodily exercise. Experience, however, must decide the question, and when the subject is once fairly brought into view it will not be difficult to collect a sufficient number of facts to enable us to form an opinion.' § 26. There is in these observations of Bostock's an evident effort to ascertain, by careful experiment, the real cause of hay-fever. It is this honesty of purpose which has probably led subsequent writers to accept his conclusions without submitting them to a searching examination such as their importance demanded ; and his statements have also, pro- bably, given the cue to some authors who have written on the disease without having had any personal experience of it. How far these statements of Bostock's are borne out by the results of actual experiments I shall have occasion to notice further on. § 27. Gordon, who was a contemporary of Bostock's, took a different view of the cause of hay-fever. Whilst he recognised the circumstance that many cases were on record which showed that severe derangement of the function of respiration was sometimes ' occasioned by the odour exhaled by aromatic pungent bodies,' he thought there could be no doubt that hay-fever was caused by the ' aroma emitted by the flowers of grass, particularly from those of the Anthox-