May 14, 1 8 74 J 



NA TURE 



27 



in, and a strongly corrosive thin discharge, with which 

 much epithelium is thrown off. This increases, after a 

 few hours, to a painful inflammation of the mucous mem- 

 brane and of the outside of the nose, and excites fever 

 with severe headache and great depression, if the patient 

 cannot withdraw himself from the heat and the sunshine. 

 In .a cool room, however, these symptoms vanish as 

 quiclcly as they come on, and there then only remains for 

 a few days a lessened discharge and soreness, as if caused 

 by the loss of epithelium. I remark, by the way, that in 

 all my other years I had very little tendency to catarrh or 

 catching cold, while the hay fever has never failed during 

 the twenty-one years of which 1 have spoken, and has 

 never attacked me earlier or later in the year than the 

 times named. The condition is extremely troublesome, 

 and increases, if one is obliged to be much exposed to the 

 sun, to an excessively severe malady. 



'■The curious dependence of the disease on the season 

 of the year suggested to me the thought that organisms 

 might be the origin of the mischief. In examining the 

 secretions I regularly found, in the last five years, certain 

 vibrio-like bodies in it, which at other times I could not 

 ohsirvc in my nasal secretion. . . . They are very small, 

 and can only be recognised with the immersion-lens of a 

 very good Hartnack's microscope. It is characteristic of 

 the common isolated single joints that they contain four 1 

 nuclei in a rov.', of which two pairs are more closely 

 ur.ited. The length of the joints is o'oo4 millimetre. 

 Upon the warm objective-stage they move with moderate 

 activity, partly in mere vibration, partly shooting back- 

 waids and forwards in the direction of their long axis ; in 

 lower temperatures they are very inactive. Occasionally 

 one finds them arranged in rows upon each other, or in 

 branching series. Observed some days in the moist 

 chamber, they vegetated again, and appeared somewhat 

 larger and more conspicuous than immediately after their 

 excretion. It is to be noted that only that kind of secre- 

 tion contains them which is expelled by violent sneezings; 

 that which drops slowly does not contain any. They 

 stick tenaciously enough in the lower cavities and recesses 

 of the nose. 



" When I saw your first notice respecting the poisonous 

 action of quinine upon infusoria, I determined at once to 

 make an experiment with that substance, thinking that 

 these vibrionic bodies, even if they did not cause the 

 whole illness, still could render it much more unpleasant 

 through their inovcments and the decompositions caused 

 by them. For that reason I made a neutral solution of 

 sulphate of quinine, which did not contain much of the 

 salt (rSoo), but still was eiTective enough, and caused 

 moderate irritation on the mucous membrane of the nose. 

 I then lay flat on mv back, keeping niy head very low, 

 and poured with a pipette about four cubic centimetres 

 into both nostrils. Then I turned my head about in 

 order to let the liquid flow in all directions. 



" The desired effect was obtained immediately, and 

 remained for some hours ; I could expose myself to the 

 sun without fits of sneezing and the other disagreeable 

 symptoms coming on. It was sufficient to repeat the 

 treatment three tim.es a day, even under the most un- 

 favourable circumstances, in order to keep myself quite 

 free.* There were then no such vibrios in the secretion. 

 If I only go out in the evening, it suffices to inject the 

 quinine once a day, just before going. After continuing 

 this treatment for some days the symptoms disappear com- 

 pletely, but if I leave ofif they return till towards the end 

 of June. 



" My first experiments with quinine date from the sum- 

 mer of 1867 ; this year (1868) I began at once as soon as 

 the first traces of the illness appeared, and 1 have thus 

 been able to stop its development completely. 



* There is no foundation for the objection that syringing the nose could 

 not cure the asthma which accompanies hay f-;ver ; for this asthma is only 

 the reflex effect arising from the irritation of the nose.— ^. 



" I have hesitated as yet in publishing the matter, be- 

 cause I have found no other patient* on whom I could 

 try the experiment. There is, it seems to me, no doubt 

 considering the extraordinary regularity in the recurrence 

 and course of the illness, that quinine had here a most 

 quick and decided eflect. fVnd this again makes my 

 hypothesis very probable, that the vibrios, even if being 

 no specific form but a very frequent one, are at least the 

 cause of the rapid increase of the symptoms in warm 

 air, as heat excites them to lively action." 



I should be very glad if the above lines would induce 

 medical men in England — the haunt of hay fever— to test 

 the observation of Helrnholtz. To most patients the ap- 

 plication with the pipette may be too difficult or impos- 

 sible ; I have therefore already suggested the use of 

 Weber's very simple but effective nose-douche. Also it 

 will be advisable to apply the solution of quinine tepid. 

 It can, lurther, not be repeated often enough that quinine 

 is frecjuently adulterated, especially with cinchonia, the 

 action of which is much less to be depended upon. 



Dr. Frickhofer, of Schwalbach, has communicated to 

 me a second case in which hay fever was cured by local 

 application of quinine (Cf. Virchow's Arcliiv (1870), 

 vol. li. p. 176). Prof. Busch, of Bonn, authorises me to 

 say that he succeeded in two cases of " catarrhus ajstivus " 

 by the same method : a third patient was obliged to ab- 

 stain from the use of quinine, as it produced an unbear- 

 able irritation of the sensible nerves of the nose. In the 

 autumn of 1872 Helrnholtz told me that his fever was 

 quite cured, and that in the meantime two other patients 

 had, by his advice, tried this method, and with the same 

 success. 



THE COMING TRANSIT OF VENUS f 

 IV. 

 T T has already been pointed out how unsatisfactory in 

 -•■ some respects were the results of the observations 

 made in 1761. Those of the year 1769 were more suc- 

 cessful, but the discrepancies of different observers still 

 threw a doubt on the result. After lincke had discussed 

 with all possible care the observations made upon these 

 two occasions,! doubts were stiH raised as to the correct- 

 ness of the value thus found for the solar parallax. The 

 reasons of these doubts were manifold. In the first place 

 in order to get any value whatever of the solar parallax, 

 Encke had been forced to assume that enormous errors 

 had been committed by some of the observers ; and 

 again, all the other methods of which we have spoken 

 were found to give a tolerably accordant value of the solar 

 parallax, but values that differed considerably from 

 Encke's determination. 



It was with no small satisfaction then, that astronomers 

 learnt that M. Powalky in 1864 had deduced a sensibly 

 greater value for the solar parallax, by using more accurate 

 values for the longitudes of the places of observation. 



But Mr. C. J. Stone, now her Majesty's astronomer 

 at the Cape of Good Hope, has lately re-discussed these 

 observations. § He finds that when the remarks of the 

 observers are rightly interpreted, all the observations 

 agree without any extravagant errors of observations ; 

 and moreover, the value of the solar parallax thus de- 

 duced agrees with the values found by other means. 

 Mr. Stone deserves the thanks of the scientific world for 

 having convinced them that this method, which at one 

 time was falling into_.disrepute, may really be rendered 

 very trustworthy. 



The result of Encke's determination was that the mean 



* Helrnholtz, now Professor of Physics at the University of Berlin, is 

 although M.D., no medical practitioner. — B. 

 t Continued from p. 14. 

 J Berlin Abhaiidlnngen, 1835, pp. 295-310. "': 



§ Monthly Notices of the K.A.S., xxviii., p. 155. 



