Show hay fever Is no longer such a mystery to medical science skin sensitization test can now find what allergy Is troubling you tr A OO 00 OO 00 ha ha ha WISH sniffle J sniffle wheeze gib be a quig hey hey S its the goodbold goo good dold old summer time and the hay fever sea iff son is open why oh why do I 1 have to go through this every year is the wail of the hay fever sufferer and well it might be for there is hardly an affliction so relentless in its unwelcome annual visits the answer to the victims 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 their eyes started to water and their noses to sniffle simply had to pack up leave home and make for the north woods or the resorts at charlevoix and mackinac island in michigan where the air is combar actively faed from du stand pollen av while iwa ahie thiros i de aiesi iesi cuse forir toia va vacation if wa sid erable expense and ana of often tea a great in inconvenience conven i ence fortunately today medical science has made such strides that hay fever can now be treated with a pi pretty tty fair degree of success right at home the big task is to find out what type of pollen is causing each individual case to do this doctors may have to be expert detectives tec tives for many different individuals are allergic to different things results Ite of allergy all ali ot of us are allergic to something or other whether it be a certain type of food the hair of a certain animal feathers from pillows some types of dust or even smoke but only about one person in ten is allergic to such a degree that he be is uncomfortable by allergic we mean in a tree free sense that we are unusually sensitive to something A high degree of allergy to some of the things mentioned in the foregoing paragraph may result in any one or combination of a number of afflictions eczema hives colds hay bay fever headache diarrhea and other ailments hay fever symptoms spring from hives which occur in the nose sinuses and eyes causing sneezing and itching if they were to occur in the lungs causing spasmodic contraction of the bronchial tubes and coughing they would produce asthma when hay bay fever occurs the pollen to which the victim is allergic enters the nasal ducts inflaming them the poison passes to the throat and bronchial tubes and finally to the ends of the bronchial tracts where swelling occurs the hay fever victim need not even be living in the neighborhood oft of the plants whose pollen are at the bottom of his bis grief to follow a hypothetical case let us say a patch of was blossoming bloss oming in a vacant lot of some city A high wind came spiriting away the seeds lifting them up over the city and carrying them a hundred or even two hundred miles from the place they grew at last as the wind dies they settle down unhappily right before an unfortunate soul who is allergic to ragweed pollen without ever having discovered it he breathes them into his nose thousands of them for it would take to cover the head of a pin test skin with pollen soon his nasal duct is inflamed and he begins to sneeze then the poison passes down through his throat and bronchial tubes and swelling occurs his eyes redden his nose itches where he cant get at it to scratch it and he begins to sniffle constantly perhaps our friend thinks he has a cold but the doctor says hay bever jever fever and tells him better bettel ad out what lype P if ot pollen oilen Is alist z A I 1 a W aerial surveys conducted thousands of feet up test the air for hay fever pollen ing the trouble the customary procedure is for the doctor to begin making skin sensitization tests little scratches are made on the arm and into each of these scratches one drop of pollen solution is placed a different type of pollen is used on each scratch the sufferer is allergic to the type of pollen placed in any scratch which reddens and swells well 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 tor 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 patients allergy is known he be will be given minute but increasing doses of the injection starting in february and continuing for a few weeks until it is thought he s should hould be immune when the season comes it does not always work out that way and sometimes daily injections during the season itself do not help different pollens do their dastardly 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 the fo following U ow ing month the giant ragweed and as september starts it is the small or common ragweed when suffering begins how severe a victims symptoms are depends upon the amount of pollen 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 sea sori itis A s mo not t vii lin usual I 1 to find 1000 to 2000 grams of pollen to the cubic yard of air pollen thins out in higher atmospheres but aviators making scientific tests can find d it a mile above the earth it is when the air contains a pollen count of 25 to the cubic yard that the hay fever victim begins to suffer so you can imagine his misery w when en the e count reaches although ten persons in one hundred 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 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 it ever laid eyes on a horse finally coming across one in the street one day he be approached it closely to examine the queer animal at length he began to choke up and there was a severe 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 tests are common it has been found that many supposed hay fever sufferers did not have hay chiy fever but were allergic to their own dog or cat you can even be allergic to cigarette smoke fincke 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 az Z 4 n I 1 xi n 1 VU 12 41 DO R X X va A P 4 A IV t Q 4 D N here are what the pollens which make hay fever sufferers sneeze and sniffle look like the models magnified times which the young lady Is holding are left to right timothy hay short ragweed marsh elder and cottonwood 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 are turned on for the first time june flies files cause asthma in the area about the great lakes elsewhere butterflies or other insects could provoke it so can certain foods such as berries asparagus or muskmelon almost anyone knows somebody who simply cant eat strawberries without getting the hives boys hate haircuts anyway when a person begins to have regular 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 it if they occur at night it might be the feathers in the pillow the hair in the bed mattress or the wool in the blankets sometimes the doctor has to be a mighty clever detective to find and V 44 ra R health authority tells boy scouts they may do good turn by destroying ragweed them however there is the case of a small boy who had an asthmatic attack every few weeks after much observation it was found that in a general way the attacks corresponded to the time of his periodic visits to the barber it was in a patch of ragweed what a place for a hay bay fever victims eventually found that he was allergic to hair not to his own hair or the hair of anyone in his family but to the hair of anyone with whom he was not in daily contacts the detroit news reports the case of a doctor in that city who suffered from asthma every sunday he finally disc discovered 0 ered that he was allergic to sunday newspapers newspaper st no kidding he was sensitive to certain aromas which the various inks gave forth because of the much larger paper on sunday he spent a great deal more time with it the daily paper did not have enough time to affect him but the sunday oni one did G Q BU bell service |