110 ) REPORT OF SCHIMMEL & Co. APRIL 1914. 
with the symptoms peculiar to hay-fever. It is well-known that the disease only attacks 
subjects specially predisposed to it, and that it cannot be artificialy provoked in those 
who are proof against it. The symptoms of the disease consist in acute inflammation 
of the mucous membranes of the eyes and the nose. They manifest themselves first 
by itching and titillation of the mucous membranes, followed by copious discharge 
of liquid matter and swelling of the organs; the conjunctiva and the eyelids become 
cedematic; they contract and become sensitive to light; and the patient begins to 
suffer from exceptionally frequent attacks of sneezing, finally resulting in the stoppage of 
one, or both of the nasal passages. The consequent enforced mouth-breathing next leads 
to similar symptoms in the mucous membranes of the mouth and pharynx; attended 
in not a few patients, particularly in the later stages of the malady, by exceedingly 
painful asthmatic attacks. Side by side with all the above symptoms the patient 
experiences a feeling of extraordinary depression and exhaustion, lassitude, and 
disinclination to bodily and mental exertion. After a definite period, generally after 
from six to eight weeks, the trouble gradually vanishes and the tormented patient 
once more enjoys a respite until the following year, when the attacks set in again. 
Spring is invariably the period of the year when hay-fever makes its appearance, at 
least in our latitudes; in more Southern regions, where the plants flower earlier, it 
commences about the end of April or the beginning of May; in Northern Germany 
about the middle to the end of May, and in England, the classical hay-fever country, 
in the first half of June. It may here be observed that the disease is rarely accompanied 
by fever, and that it would therefore be more correct to call it hay-cold. In the 
‘United States the disease appears in two separate forms, differing both in point of 
season and of cause; one occurring in the late spring and known as “Spring cold”, . 
“Rose cold” or “June cold”, while another and more severe form, appears in the late 
summer or early autumn, and is known as “Autumnal catarrh”’. There are sporadic 
instances of patients who are subject to both forms, and these are the victims, from 
June until the late autumn, of their unfortunate predisposition. 
The problem of the cause of the affection has been the subject of numerous 
investigations in the course of the last century, since Bostock, an English physician, 
first described the disease carefully and scientifically in the year 1819, and the most 
widely-differing theories have been advanced in regard to it. Bostock ascribed the 
affection, of which he recognised perfectly the regular recurrence, to the first moist 
heat of spring, to a too powerful glare of the sun’s light, or to the presence of dust or 
similar atmospheric influences, which, in his idea, attacked the eyes. But as these 
effects are not restricted to the clearly-circumscribed period of hay-cold this explanation 
was obviously unsatisfactory. Elliotson, in the year 1831, adopted another view of the 
determining cause, and looked for it in the pollen of certain plants, but apparently 
without having any experimental foundation for his theory. Such experimental proof 
was not afforded until the year 1873, when Blackley showed that certain pollens, such 
as those of rye and other graminaceous plants, of which the presence in the air at the 
hay-fever period was then established, were capable of provoking the typical symptoms 
when brought into contact with the mucous membranes of predisposed subjects; 
and that it was also possible to set up similar symptoms by rubbing the pollen upon ~ 
the previously scarified skin of the patient. Under the influence of the rise of the 
science of bacteriology, which began to develop soon afterwards, this pollen-theory, 
which has now again been recognised as the correct one, was abandoned in favour 
of one first propounded by von Helmholtz, which ascribed the cause of hay-fever to” 4 
the action of bacteria. Helmholtz and other investigators discovered in the secretions — 
4 
j 
