Hay fever, its etiology and treatment : with an appendix on rose cold / by Morell Mackenzie.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hay fever, its etiology and treatment : with an appendix on rose cold / by Morell Mackenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    J. Constant de Rebecque.1 This passage is important as conveying the result of an experienced physician’s observation of his own symptoms. He tells us that for thirteen years he had been afflicted with coryza lasting throughout the rose season, and ceasing of itself when that time had passed (per toturn tempus quo roses se tnihi olfaciendas preebent durat, eoque elapso sponte desiuit). At first he attributed his sufferings to heat, but in the year 1685, when the summer was exceptionally hot and there were hardly any roses on account of caterpillars, he was struck by the fact that his annual disorder did not trouble him. The symptoms came on at once, however, on his inadvertently plucking a rose towards the end of the season. He concludes that something flows from roses (e rosis aliquid effluere) which stings the nose (in his case exceptionally sensitive) and by means of tiny prickles produces a solution of continuity imperceptible to the sight (aculeis quibusdam solutionem continui etsi non sensibus obviam excitat). This observer, therefore, came very near the mark as to the real cause of the disease, to which he applied the term coryza a rosarum odore. An extraordinary case is related by Herlinus2 (on the authority of Adrian Spigelius, whose name still survives in one of the lobes of the liver) of a Roman cardinal, Oliver Caraffa, who could not bear the smell of roses. This is confirmed from personal knowledge by another writer, who3 adds that Caraffa was obliged every year to shut himself up during the rose season, guards being stationed at all the gates of the palace to stop any visitor who might be wearing or carrying the dreaded flower. It is, of course, possible that in this case the roses may have produced some other affection than rose fever; but, as it is distinctly stated that it was the smell to which the cardinal objected, we may, I think, fairly conclude that the “ sting of the flesh ” which tormented him was, in fact, rose-pollen. About the end of the seventeenth century, Riedlin4 relates the case of a merchant of his acquaintance who was afflicted with sneezing and catarrh every year when the roses were in bloom. Riedlin advised him to avoid the cause of his complaint, and modern science can suggest nothing better. The case related by Hiinerswolff5 of a man in whom the perfume 1 “Atrium Medicinas Helvetiorum,” obs. 92, p. 1 $etsc<]. Geneva, 1691. 3 “ De Remediis sudoriferis et analepticis,” p. 32. Lipsias, 1693. 3 Joh. Pierius “ Hieroglyphica,” lib. viii. cap. 25, p. 96. Francofurli, 167s. * “ Linete Medicas,” p. 177. Augustas Vindelicorum, 1695. 5 “ Ephem, Nat. Curios.,” dec. ii. ann. v. obs. xxii, E