Hay fever, its etiology and treatment : with an appendix on rose cold / by Morell Mackenzie.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hay fever, its etiology and treatment : with an appendix on rose cold / by Morell Mackenzie. 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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    membrane of the nasal fossae swells so as to block up the passages and make respiration through them impossible. At the same time, there is profuse lachrymation with much pricking and stinging of the conjunctival surfaces, and some- times photophobia. There is often a certain amount of chemosis, and occasionally the eyelids become puffed so as almost to close the eyes. The discharge from both nose and eyes gradually grows thicker, sometimes even becoming semi-purulent in character. There may be severe neuralgic pain in the eyeballs and over the back of the head. Now and then there is some degree of pyrexia, but this is by no means the rule. The disorder often varies considerably in intensity, even in the same person, within short intervals ot time, so as almost to give an intermittent character to the complaint. This is probably due to the varying quantity of pollen present in the atmosphere, the severity of the disease being, as a rule, in direct proportion to the abundance of the materies inorbi. An attack lasts from a few hours to several days, or even longer, finally ceasing almost as suddenly as it set in, and leaving little or no trace of its presence either in local lesion or systemic disturbance. In some patients hay fever is accompanied by nettle-rash. The asthmatic form of the complaint may be superadded to the disorder just described, or it may constitute the entire affection. It generally comes on in the daytime, and the paroxysm may pass off in a few hours, the patient first ex- pectorating a little ropy mucus, and later an abundant frothy secretion, or the dyspnoea may continue, with only slight remissions, as long as the sufferer is exposed to the influence of pollen. The attacks seldom produce any emphysema, and the patient sooner or later entirely recovers. The diagnosis of hay fever, from common catarrh on the one hand and spasmodic asthma on the other, is not always easy, and mistakes in diagnosis were formerly veiy common ; but the disease is now so much better known that errors are