1889.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 29 



Physiologists have time and again proven for us these reflex 

 acts ; we are constantly seeing them illustrated in our every-day 

 life ; and surely their connection with this disease is not beyond 

 the range of possibility. 



There is another factor, which enables us to regard Hay- 

 Fever in the light of a Neurosis. This is its almost exclusive 

 confinement to patients in the higher walks of life. As the 

 human race advances to higher degrees of civilization and 

 refinement, in direct proportion do the Neuroses multiply among 

 our aristocracy, and each successive generation shows us the 

 increase. The Anglo-Saxon race appears to be alone liable, 

 English and Americans being those who are almost exclusively 

 affected. As to Temperament, — it almost always occurs in the 

 nervous and energetic. 



Sir Morell Mackenzie, in his work on Hay-Fever, quotes a 

 case, in which a young lady, who was a victim of Hay-Fever, on 

 visiting the Royal Academy, was so struck with the realistic 

 representation of Hay-Fever, that she was at once seized with a 

 severe paroxysm of her complaint, from which she was at the 

 time free. Dr. Mackenzie thinks she must have passed a hay- 

 cart on her way to the academy. It seems probable that in a 

 person of highly sensitive nervous organization, such a sight 

 would act reflexly on the nerves, already in a state of hyperaes- 

 thesia, and produce the paroxysm. The sight or thought of 

 anything sour will cause an increase in the salivary secretion ; and 

 so this case seems to bind us still closer to the nerve-theory of 

 Hay-Fever. Why is it that some of us suffer, while others enjoy 

 immunity ? For the same reason that, on exposure to some 

 contagious disease, one man will contract it, and the others 

 escape. We give it that very convenient but unfortunate term, 

 " idiosyncrasy," — that peculiar liability, some of us have, to con- 

 tract certain diseases, which we can not as yet explain, and 

 which is often hereditary. 



The active cause of the irritation causing Hay-Fever still 

 remains unsettled, to a certain extent ; but the majority cling to 

 the pollen theory. I would raise the following questions : 



I. The pollen from vegetable life acts as a direct irritant to 



the nerve-endings in the mucous membrane. 



II. The pollen, or atmosphere, contains bacilli, which act as a 

 ferment, on entering the blood. 



