362 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



suggested that the victim should "eniplayster the forhead and temples with 

 mylke, oyle of roses, and vynegre a lytle." 



Possibly the earliest reference to what we call hay fever was the descrip- 

 tion by Botallus of Batavia in 1586. He wrote of people in whom the smell 

 of roses produced sneezing, headache, running at the nose and weeping. 

 Cardinal Caraffa, in the 17th Century, placed guards at his gates to un- 

 burden visitors of any roses. Helmont, in 1607, described an asthmatic case 

 in which symptoms occurred only in the summer time. This was the first 

 reference to "seasonal occurrence." All these were just personal notes on 

 the fact that odor of roses brought on odd attacks. There were never any 

 suggestions on what to do about it. 



In 18 19, John Bostock, an English physician, placed hay fever in the list 

 of clinical diseases by accurately describing his own case. Evidently the 

 disease was quite well known in England by that time and was already 

 popularly called "hay fever." The British developed their hay fever then, 

 as now, from exposure to grasses. Ragweed is not native to England. 



Then came Charles Blackley — also an English doctor. He was an honest 

 observer, and besides, he had hay fever. In 1859 Blackley collided with 

 dried grass blossoms that one of his children had placed in a vase in the 

 parlor. He got hay fever — and out of season, too. 



Blackley thought: "In most diseases known to medicine something is 

 out of kilter in the makeup of the patient when sickness strikes. Yes, and 

 when it does, something comes in from outside and starts the actual trouble. 

 Now what could there be about that grass that could make hay fever 

 happen to me?" He went back to the dry grass bouquet and examined it. He 

 had his clue. He got hay fever. 



Here was a starting point — a scientific one, dooming Dr. Blackley to 

 years of discomfort, for he doubled as his own guinea pig. He could not 

 go about applying plant and pollen mixtures to the eyes, nose and throat 

 membranes of his patients. They came to be cured, not tormented. He 

 had to use his own trigger-mechanism to test the pollens. He studied pollens 

 of a hundred or more different plants and grasses. He learned what they 

 did to him. Hay fever symptoms, if left to Nature and the patient, began 

 when pollen of the grain started to increase in the air. They were at their 

 worst when pollen concentration was at its height. He made of himself a 

 human pollen meter. He had figured out a queer little process to test out 

 pollens that were poison to him. He rubbed moistened pollen extract into 

 himself to produce those welts that rose and itched and burned on his arms 

 and legs. He knew which kinds made him "react," but he still needed to 

 learn how many kinds of pollen caused hay fever. Then, too he wanted to 

 know how much of it was floating around. He suspected that there was 

 a whole world of plants busily at work pouring out pollen. Blackley did 

 not want to know why people got hay fever — he just wanted to know hoiv. 



To his patients it seemed as if there was no practical use for what he was 



