1872: Good times for hay fever sufferers

By the 1870s things were looking bright for the many sufferers of hay fever, hay asthma, rose cold, June cold, summer catarrh, autumnal catarrh, or whatever a physician chose to call it.  Dr. Morrill Wyman (1812-1903) of Boston  determined that there were certain places, particularly of high elevation, where you could escape the disease, and Dr. Charles Blackley (1820-1900) of England discovered that pollen was exciting cause. 

Blackley proved that severity of hay fever attacks were directly proportional to the amount of pollen in the air a person inhaled. He also proved Wyman correct that places of high altitudes were safe hiding places for hay fever sufferers because he, by performing “extensive experiments showed that the amount of pollen in the atmosphere at great elevations was to that in the air at ordinary breathing levels at nineteen to one.”(1, page 23-24)(I wrote about his experiments in this post

What Blackley, nor any other physician of the 19th century, failed to prove was what caused one to develop hay fever.  This was something to be left to investigators at the turn of the 20th century.  Plus pollen would prove to be just one of many exciting causes, as dust would also proved to cause hay fever symptoms.  Foods sometimes caused symptoms, and certain foods, and hot, dry, sunny, and windy days are the “combination to be most dreaded” by hay fever sufferers. (4, page 121-122)

Prior to these two discoveries physicians merely speculated as to the cause — heat, dust, sunshine, fatigue — and speculated as to what the remedy would be.  Now hay fever sufferers had some hope, because if pollen was the cause, then they could just avoid plants that make pollen.  Yet, lo and behold, Blakley later proved this may not be so easy, as pollen was shown to travel for miles and miles, even traveling so far away that it could land on a ship far away from land.

Wyman came from a family of hay fever sufferers, and by the time he was diagnosed after graduating from Harvard in 1833, his family had already obtained “abundant material for studying the natural history of the disease.”  Wyman continued the family studies to include 81 case histories of hay fever, 55 of whom noted to have benefited from “residing in the White Mountains.” (2, page 18)(4, page 171)

Wyman published his book, “Summer Catarrh,” in 1872, and partly due to his book, and word of mouth of he and other physicians, the White Mountains became the preeminent Hay Fever Resort in the United States.  A few years later, in 1874, the U.S. Hay Fever Association was established in Bethlehem, “where it continued to meet for the next fifty years.”  You can read all about the White Mountains, Hay Fever Resorts and the U.S. Hay Fever Association in Gregg Mittman’s easy to read book “Breathing Space.” (2, page 18)

This resort and others like it in the United States, made hay fever “the pride of America’s leisure class, and the base of a substantial tourist economy that catered to the culture of escape.”  This made hay fever a disease of the white, upper class who could afford to escape their disease.  While we know this wasn’t necessarily true, it did seem to physicians of the era that it was. (3, page 602)

Referenes:

1. Hollopeter, William Clarence, “Hay-fever and its successful treatment,” 1898, Philadelphia, P. Blakiston’s Son and Co.


2. Mittman, Gregg, “Breathing Space,” 2007


3. Mittman, Gregg, “Hay Fever Holiday: Health, Leisure, and Place in Gilded-Age America,” Bull. His. Med, 2003, 77, pages 600-673


4. Wyman, Morill, “Summer Catarrh,” 1876 (first edition was published in 1872), New York, Hurd and Houghton