Medicine: Hay Fever

Ragweed began to ripen and send its pollen (ten billion grains to the plant) into the air last week. In consequence, some two million peculiarly sensitive residents of the U. S. began to snuffle & weep with their annual attacks of hayfever. New York City, Chicago and smaller communities hired men to pull up every stalk of ragweed within city limits. For one day’s pulling Chicago paid 25¢ and a ticket good for a week’s room & board in a charity shelter. Sales of home air filterers perked up. If his sleeping quarters are free from dust, the mildly sensitive hayfever victim will not suffer very much during the hours he must spend in open, unfiltered air. Allergists prepared for the annual autumn peak of their specialized practice.

Ragweed covers about 50% of the cases of hayfever in the U. S. Pollens from certain trees, grasses and weeds are just as irritating. Calvin Coolidge gets his annual attacks when grass begins to flower. At his last birthday July 4, when he went up to Plymouth, Vt., he was so ill that he went to bed for several days. He has been up & around since. But he would not travel to Washington last week for President Hoover’s nomination party (see p.7).

Hayfever is closely related to asthma, hives, eczema, certain forms of food sensitivity, some forms of sick headache, occasionally colitis. They are all forms of allergy, a new medical specialty with two national organizations—the Society for the Studyof Asthma & Allied Conditions and the Association for the Study of Allergy.

Two of several theories of allergy stand out as useful — he protein theory and the reagin theory. Two points are certain about hayfever and the other allergies: 1) certain substances are mildly poisonous to certain people; 2) people react to their personal poisons in specific ways. The irritants may be plant pollens (ragweed, timothy, oak), foods (wheat, milk, eggs, fish), ani maldanders, feathers, dusts. The victim may show his symptoms in his nose and eyes (this is hayfever per se), his skin (hives), brain (migraine), intestines (colitis). Two theories concerning the physiology of allergy have many followers among the specialists. One theory presumes that proteins in pollens, foods, etc. get into the blood and reach the body cells. When the cells first encounter the strange protein, they manufacture an enzyme to digest the stranger. Next time the protein appears the wary cells have an oversupply of enzymes and destroy too many protein molecules at once. The blood cannot carry off the waste products fast enough. Consequently some part suffers—nose, eyes, skin. The other theory presumes that the sufferer has an unidentified organ in his body which manufactures substances called reagins. Those reagins appear in the blood. Whenever a substance (pollen, food, etc.) appears which unites with a specific kind of reagin, that sets up a reaction in a “shock organ” (nose, eyes, bronchi, etc.). Whichever theory is correct, and proponents of neither claim certainty, allergists have progressed remarkably in treating the multitudinous manifestations of this peculiar sensitivity. By testing various substances on the patient’s skin, allergists find just what he is sensitive to. From that they prepare an extract with which they very often can immunize him. But immunity to the pollen of one group of plants does not protect against the pollen of another group. A cured hayfever does not prevent migraine or hives. The tendency to allergy is inherited.