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Show Hay lover h No Longer Such a Mystery to Medical Science Skin Sensitization Tost Can Now Find What Allergy Is Troubling Yon By WILLIAM C. TJTLEY KA-CIIOOO-OO-OO! Ha-ha-ha-WISII-eeeeccee' Sniffle sniffle, wheeze gib be a hapigichiff, quit;! Hey hev' it's the good old summer time and the hay fever season sea-son is open. "Why, oh, why, do I have to go through this every year'" is the wail of the hay fever sufferer, and well it micrht be for there is hardly an affliction so relentless in its mwoi annual visits. The answer to the victim's cry is that he is allergic to something In the air, probably the pollen from a plant or weed. What particular plant it is determines whether its pollen rides the air waves in May, June, July or September. Time used to be that hay fever victims, when they began to sneeze, teir eyes started to water and their tjses to sniffle, simply had to pack cd, leave home and make for the North Woods or the resorts at Charlevoix and Mackinac island in Michigan where the air is compar-I'jvely compar-I'jvely free from dust and pollen. Ihile this made an excellent ex-r;se ex-r;se for a vacation it was a considerable con-siderable expense and often a great inconvenience. Fortunately today medical science has made such strides that hay fever fe-ver can now be treated with a 1 rretty fair degree of success right it home. The big task is to find ::t what type of pollen is causing each individual case. To do this A :':;tors may have to be expert de- 2 i.'lvac fnr mflnv rtifTprpnt inrfiviH- i u;is are allergic to different things. Results of Allergy. All of us are allergic to some-iiag some-iiag or other, whether it be a cer-s cer-s .in type of food, the hair of a cer--iin animal, feathers from pillows, y sae types of dust, or even smoke, ia lut only about one person in ten is i allergic to such a degree that he is EJ comfortable. i By allergic we mean, in a free I :sse, that we are unusually sensi-. sensi-. ve to something. A high degree ; i"' .: allergy to some of the things ' rectioned in the foregoing para- in may result in any one or l 'bination of a number of afflic--i-eezema.hives, "colds," hay J : .ever, headache, diarrhea and other -nents. t: Hay fever symptoms spring from ; j -es which occur in the nose, si- -:s and eyes, causing sneezing itching. If they were to occur abor -tieiungs, causing spasmodic con-y con-y by -iCtion of the bronchial tubes and first' !:Shing. they would produce asth-itone asth-itone a Wen hay fever occurs the into to wmc'1 victim is aller-ovver aller-ovver ?: Eters e nasal ducts, inflam-i inflam-i -5 them; the poison passes to the -cat and bronchial tubes, and their ;;!y to the ends of the bronchial with i;;' where swelling occurs, butes rce hay ever victim need nQt a be living in the neighborhood iCUTS ae plants whose pollen are at the ubber of his grief. To follow a ounds 'ietical case, let us say a patch ented ;ti5'eeds was blossoming in a '-at lot of some city. A high "iN ST S Came' sPiriting away the 1 1 mnS them up over the city cause : carrying them a hundred or e WO a two hundred miles from the Gum' -t they grew. At last as the -idies they settle down, unhappi-fllNST unhappi-fllNST before an unfortunate soul se the '.' ls all"gic to ragweed pollen irallV ut ever having discovered it. 1L -bathes them into his nose . r ft t Dis 01 them' for 14 would take ILEflbt o) to cover the head of a pin. ; el . Test Skin With PoUen. ': A LlFE ;t naSal duCt is Mamed quipPioe gms to sneeze. Then the Firestone passes down through his n4 bronchial tubes and CE 01 IRES1- s cost thj - - ,,,." d? . -"v , 4 ' J V, , I rectW" j, - 3 n3 -v Ki - -a . conducted thou-1 thou-1 !pollennP' test the 'or 'Wtj itch eyes redden, a U i-i watch T1 h can'1 get t"K :MuZ he had better y , lXf Pllen is caus-TdW': caus-TdW': k tor'tv. custornary pro- ,::i'.che a tl2ation tests. Lit-nf Lit-nf ' each1"6 ,made on &e arm, ot Vhese matches :i ta each type of P011 -1 any tyPe of P"en 'swells "atch which red- We'll say our hypothetical victim is allergic to ragweed pollen. His protests to the doctor that he has not been near any ragweed need not confuse us, for we know how the pollen got to him. The doctor explains it to him, too. Now the doctor orders injections of the proper type of pollen vaccine into the blood. Next year, now that the patient's allergy is known, he will be given minute, but increas-ing increas-ing doses of the injection, starting in February and continuing for a few weeks until it is thought he should be immune when the season comes. It does not always work out that way, and sometimes daily injections in-jections during the season itself do not help. Different pollens do their dastardly dastard-ly work at different times of the year in different sections. In the eastern and central states, for instance, June grass causes trouble around the beginning of that month; in early July it is Timothy hay, late X ' ' - v i V r " I ! i 2- i : : i "' :-: :&ssiiVi ; ' ' ;Ss A 'ic : i -si V I : isij s . : ..;-. . . . . ; !: : ,1 ' I I '::;:: ll::.l- ''ll:':l;::::l:il' ! ' . " - I- - ' x y 1 'I mmmmmm&m ; m:imsm i . mmmmW- 4v.i : Amk :;mmmmimmmBmmm4 Here are what the pollens which make hay fever sufferers sneeze and sniffle look like. The models (magnified 3,500 times) which the young lady is holding are, left to right: Timothy hay, short ragweed, burweed, marsh elder and cottonwood. the following month the giant ragweed rag-weed and as September starts it is the small or common ragweed. When Suffering Begins. How severe a victim's symptoms are depends upon the amount of pollen pol-len that is filling the air he breathes as well as upon his susceptibility. The amount of pollen is likely to vary from day to day. It will be stirred up more, of course, when there is a good breeze, and it will tend to settle on a calm day. In some states at the height of the season it is not unusual to find 1,000 to 2,000 grains of pollen to the cubic yard of air. Pollen thins out in higher atmospheres, but aviators making scientific tests can find it a mile above the earth. It is when the air contains a pollen pol-len count of 25 to the cubic yard that the hay fever victim begins to suffer, so you can imagine his misery mis-ery when the count reaches 2,000! According to medical scientists, you should not sit next to an open window on a train if you would avoid hay fever, although air-conditioned cars are all right, for the pollen is filtered from the air m them. Nasal sprays will protect the nose in some measure from attack, and a little white vaseline around the opening of the nostrils will keep some of the pollen from getting in. Victims will find themselves more comfortable in a dark room where there are no drafts. Although ten persons in one hundred hun-dred suffer to some degree because they are allergic, only one of these ten, on an average, has hay fever. Various allergy victims suffer in various ways. Sensitive to Horse Hair. Take the case of the city child who was accustomed enough to thousands of automobiles in his daily life, but seldom, if ever, laid eyes on a horse. Finally coming j In a patch of ragweed; what a place for a hay fever victim! across one in the street one day he approached it closely to examine the queer animal at length. He began be-gan to choke up and there was a severe se-vere excretion of fluid from the lungs. Now he had played with cats at times, and he owned a little wire-haired fox terrier, but none of these had ever affected him so It just turned out that he was allergic to horse hair. Actually, now that skin sensitization sensitiza-tion tests are common, it has been found that many supposed hay fever fe-ver sufferers did not have hay fever, fe-ver, but were allergic to their own dog or cat. You can even be allergic aller-gic to cigarette smoke. There is on record the case of a woman who was sensitive to that kind of smoke. Her husband smoked a pipe; when she played bridge-at the home of friends who smoked cigarettes she would begin to sniffle and appear to have a cold. The doctor found what was troubling her and treated her for it. Now her companions could smoke corn silk without bothering her. Seasonal 'asthma is frequently caused by house dust which mixes more actively through the air at the time of the year when the radiators radi-ators are turned on for the first time. June flies cause asthma in the area about the Great Lakes; elsewhere butterflies or other insects in-sects could provoke it; so can certain cer-tain foods, such as berries, asparagus aspara-gus or muskmelon. Almost anyone any-one knows somebody who simply can't eat strawberries without getting get-ting the hives. When a person begins to have regular reg-ular attacks of asthma at a certain time of day or night, the doctor is likely to examine every article with which the victim regularly comes in contact at that time. If they occur oc-cur at night, it might be the feathers feath-ers in the pillow, the hair in the bed mattress or the wool in the blankets. Boys Hate Haircuts, Anyway. Sometimes the doctor has to be a mighty clever detective to find them, however. There is the case of a small boy who had an asthmatic asth-matic attack every few weks. After much observation it was found that in a general way the attacks corresponded cor-responded to the time of his periodic peri-odic visits to the barber. It was eventually found that he was allergic aller-gic to hair not to his own hair, or the hair of anyone in his family, Dut to the hair of anyone with whom he was not in daily contact! The Detroit News reports the case of a doctor in that city who suffered from asthma every Sunday. H finally discovered that he was allergic al-lergic to Sunday newspapers! No kidding. He was sensitive to certain cer-tain aromas which the various ink, lave forth; because of the much larger paper on Sunday, he spent a great deal more time with it. The rfnilv Daper did not have enough meytoP affect him, but the Sunday 0needB.'llSyndic....-WNUS.rvic.. |