The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1878-08-24
Hay Fever.

With the beginning of August the wa
tery-eyed multitude flee to the mountain
tops, laden with pocket handkerchiefs, in
halators, Nasal syringes and maps of the
United States, on which the SUBMITS which
profess to be inaccessible to hay fever are
set down in cheerful red. These suffer
ing, shifting hordes, which rush to and fro
every August to escape their mysterious
tormentor, equal in number any of the le.
gions of the Crusades which set out to
conquer the Holy Land. Fashions change.
We sit in our pews aud fight heathendom
through tracts aud missionary boxes in
lieu OF sword and lance. The very disease
of our bodies have their new whims
and outbreaks as we'll as our science or
religion. In the days of the Crusades,
there were 300 leper houses in great Bri-
tain; before Lady Mary inoculatcd her
body, two-thirds of the men and women in
England were SCARED deep with smallpox
and thanked God, too, that their lives were
left to them.
Now we have given leprosy and small
pox the go-by; it is our nerves that jangle
out of tune Remedies change as well as
ailments; instead of mystic potions of owls
fat and plasters of ants, air is the univer-
sal remedy. We migrate in legions to
Minnesota, Florida, to Aiken, Arizona, to
find the qHality of breath just suited to
our special Eheumatism or eatarrh 0rwe
hetake ourselves to pure milk and nature,
or give ourselves up to be kneaded or mag
netized. There is no end to the diseov-
cries of science in new diseases, and there
is nothing in which Fashion follows more
blindly or talks more loudly. Some ocu-
list, for example, discovered a year or two
ago that difference in the focal distance
Of the eyes resulted sometimes in head
ache, nervous disease, and even epilepsy.
Now, every second man or child that you
meet wears spectacles, and half of the all
ments of brain, stomach or liver are sad
died on the unfortunate lenses of the eye.
Let US have some common sense as well
as silence in the matter. 4 few of the
eyes of the present generation doubtless
differ in the convex.ty of the lenses, but
their almost universal inferiority to the
eyes of our grandfathers is much more
likely to be the result of their misuse in
childhood Our boys and girls use their
eyes over fac text in school books, papers
and magazines to an extent unknown to
any previous generation; and as if that
were not enough, the babies in the kinder
garten are put to picking out patterns with
pins and working in card board, when
their eyes are unfit for close use at short
distances The mountaineer of seventy in
the Blue Ridge, who can pick you out the
deer's trail over the dry leaves, and whose
eyes have been trained to long outdoor
vision, wears no eye glasses, and has no
trouble with his focal distances.
Just the same reasoning may apply to
this hay fever panic. A few unfortunates,
no doubt, are mysteriOusly affected by the
pollen of certain flowers, or by the aroma
of the linden, or some murderous invisible
animalcule going about in the hay fields
seeking whom they may deSour. But
eight out of ten of the other refugees to
the mountain tops, we would suggest, are
people with a tendency to catarrh and
lung disease, who take care of themselves
in winter, but ignore the fact that August,
with its intense heat, violent perspiration,
light clothing, and the malaria abroad in
all low and swampy districts, is the very
season for cold and fever. Let them fly
to the pleasantest mountain peak they know
of, if they choose to have a good time,
but little ordinary care and flannel at
home would probably answer the purposes
of health just as well.-M y Tribune.