Experimental researches on the causes and nature of catarrhus aestivus (hay-fever or hay-asthma) / by Charles H. Blackley.

  • Blackley Charles H. (Charles Harrison)
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental researches on the causes and nature of catarrhus aestivus (hay-fever or hay-asthma) / by Charles H. 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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    nomena of a totally different character to those seen in the skin. When fresh pollen is applied to the lining membrane of the nares its first effect, as I have before stated, is to produce itching; this is rapidly followed by sneezing and discharge of serum. The first contact of pollen with the Schneiderian membrane does not, so far as my experiments upon myself enable me to decide, seem to produce any inflammatory action; it is only when the discharge of serum has gone on for a time that redness and excoriation are seen. It is true that a different effect is seen when pollen is applied to the eye, but this, I think, is, as I have before intimated, partly due to mechanical irritation. If it were possible to apply pollen to the mucous membrane of the nares without producing a discharge of serum, I believe that, although we might have sneezing and also infiltration into the cellular tissue, we should have little or no inflammatory action. I have, on two or three occasions, been able to produce effusion into the submucous tissue by the application of pollen which had been reduced to a pulp by being rubbed up with water, but in these cases there was little or no sneezing at the commencement, and scarcely any discharge from the nostrils, whilst at the same time there was neither redness nor excoria- tion seen in any of the experiments. It is, however, only right to say that my examinations and experiments on this point have never been made in any case but my own, and cannot therefore be considered sufficient to decide the question. But whatever may be the effect which pollen has in the majority of cases when first applied, there can be no doubt about the effect which a constant discharge of fluid has upon the mucous membrane and skin over which it passes, namely, that it produces redness and excoriation. § 303. The exudation in the nares at first consists of a thin serum, which contains a large number of minute granules : these may generally be seen to have a vigorous molecular motion. Some part of the molecules are, no doubt, derived from the pollen grain. Interspersed with these are a number of bodies which to me look like enlarged free nuclei from pus-cells. In some of these the outline is
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