Hay fever, hay asthma and excessive sneezing / by Litton Forbes.

  • Forbes, Litton.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hay fever, hay asthma and excessive sneezing / by Litton Forbes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    skin, sucli as eczema and urticaria, that asthma and that hay fever will often he correlated in the same individual, or in several memhers of a family. The same observer has also pointed out that local congestion of the upper air passages may act as a starting point from which the hay fever symptoms may spread. In many cases of hay fever of supposed gouty origin I have observed that the sufferers were generally of a distinctly neurotic type. The attacks from which they suffered were like gout, periodic with a distinct tendency to recurrence. The patients themselves could foretell the advent of their attacks with great certainty. Indeed, between hay fever symptoms and those of gout there are several very curious points of resemblance. The attacks in both affections occur in crises, last a variable time, and are frequently worse at night. They occur in spring and autumn, but in England only in the former season. With many individuals some form of skin disease such as nettle rash or eczema is a common accompaniment of hay fever. A further careful exam- ination will often reveal unexpected evidences of a gouty historv. Hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that gout may be an important factor in the causation of hay fever, by inducing such a condition of the mucous mem- branes as to render them liable to suffer from the pecu- liar irritation of pollen. Other causes must of course not be excluded. Moreover as the gouty diathesis becomes modified or varied in members of a family so