skin, has to the mucous membrane, or inside skin, which lines the stomach and intestines. With this explanation, it is easy to understand how it is that an irritating poison coming in contact with the stomach immediately tells its tale on the fair shoulders of the ball-room belle.
Results equally distressing, if not so unsightly, are produced in some individuals without the introduction to the stomach of articles of food or medicine. Floating particles in the air are sometimes sufficient to produce all the symptoms of spasmodic asthma. We once knew a dispenser who could not stop in the room with an unstoppered bottle of ipecacuanha. Even if it were opened thirty or forty feet away out of his sight, he was instantly aware of the fact, in consequence of the sudden seizures to which he was liable. We have heard of an old lady, residing in Holborn, who at times was subjected to sickness and vomiting in the most sudden and unaccountable manner. At last her physician, suspecting some atmospheric influence, made inquiries, and found out that a room on the ground-floor, at the back of the house, was used as a dispensary, whence the emanations from the ipecacuanha penetrated to her apartments on the second-floor front.
There is a very distressing complaint, popularly known as the hay-asthma, which affects a certain small proportion of the population. At the season of hay-making, these individuals are suddenly seized with what appears to be a very bad influenza—running at the nose, sneezing, coughing, and in some cases a most violent irritation of all the mucous surfaces, the eye-lids, and the air-passages, and the nose swelling in the most extraordinary manner. We have seen individuals quite blind for a time from this cause. Persons so affected can only find relief by immediately retreating from the vicinity of the hay-fields. The Duke of Richmond, for instance, who is particularly susceptible to the influence of hay asthma, retreats every hay-making season to Brighton, to avoid his well-known enemy. Floating vegetable particles of the seed of the grass are the cause of this extraordinary affection. That these travel a long distance is clear, inasmuch as persons susceptible to their influence feel uneasy even within a mile or two of hay-fields. We know a gentleman, living in the Bloomsbury district, who is rendered very uneasy in the hay season when the wind is from the north or north-east, but is quite well when it shifts to the west. The explanation of this circumstance lies in the fact, that the open fields where hay is made lie so much nearer to him in the former direction than in the latter, the intervening mass of houses towards the west acting as a kind of disinfectant as far as his own peculiar susceptibility to hay emanations are concerned. There are animal emanations, however, which appear to affect some almost as energetically as these vegetable ones. The atmosphere of cats, for instance, is intolerable to them. We have heard of a military gentleman who would sometimes become suddenly and violently agitated during dinner, so much so that his speech left him, and he seemed on the verge of an apoplectic seizure. His friends, however, knew what this meant, and immediately began searching for the cat, which was sure to be found in some part of the room, although before unobserved. To other individuals the presence of rabbits is equally obnoxious, they seem to catch cold merely from going near them, and all their symptoms are greatly augmented if they happen to stroke them down. We have lately heard of two individuals of the same family who are affected in the same manner from the same cause: some people we know cannot sit in the same room with a cheese, others are obliged to retire before the presence of cooked hare.
Mr. Nunn, one of the surgeons of the Middlesex Hospital, who has given some very curious instances of idiosyncracies with respect to food and medicine, in the British Medical Journal, states that he has found that honey-comb has produced in a patient swelling of the tongue, frothing of the mouth, and blueness of the fingers; that figs produced formication of the palate and fauces, and that the dust of split peas have the effect, upon some persons, of hay-fever. A very singular example related by him of the effect of touch, is that of a gentleman, who could not endure the sensation produced by the handling of a russet apple. We have been informed of another singular instance of the excitability of the epidermis. For instance, a lady who immediately cries involuntarily on the addition of any mineral acid to the water in which she is bathing her feet; and of a gentleman in whom a severe attack of spasmodic asthma is immediately induced by the application of cold water to his instep.
We have hitherto dwelt merely upon certain idiosyncratic susceptibilities to certain articles of medicine, food, and animal emanations. The disease, spasmodic asthma, just alluded to, as to its effects is so nearly allied to many of those related, that there can be no doubt they arise from a common cause, irritating particles floating in the air, or atmospheric influences. A man goes to bed perfectly well, and awakens in the night with a difficulty of breathing, which threatens to suffocate him; after a while it goes off, but if he remains in the same place he is always liable to a recurrence of the fit. Dr. Hyde Salter, who has devoted much attention to this capricious disease, gives it as his experience that change of air, as in hay-asthma, is the only cure for this distressing complaint. As a general rule, those persons who are affected in pure country air, invariably find relief, or rather complete immunity from attack, in the moist air of dense cities, whilst city asthmatics will become instantly well in the dry pure air of the country. Dr. Salter relates a most singular couple of cases illustrative of this extraordinary capriciousness. One patient could only breathe in Norwood, the other only in London. If the one who could live at Norwood attempted to go to London, he was invariably stopped by a seizure of asthma at Camberwell Green. If, on the other hand, the patient who was exempt in London, attempted to go to Norwood, he found Camberwell Green the limit of his journeying—if he passed this his enemy immediately attacked him. Camberwell Green was their joint difficulty, and will remain so to the end.
Many persons who come up from the country for the “best advice” for this complaint, find that