Hay fever: only for the well-to-do

Well, that was the case in the mid-nineteenth century. In March 1819 Dr. John Bostock reported the first case of hay fever—his own—to a medical society in London. More cases were soon reported. In looking into this new phenomenon, Bostock noted that the condition appeared only among the upper classes. “I have not heard of a single, unequivocal case occurring among the poor.”

Because hay fever was associated with affluence, it became a rather fashionable affliction. In the U.S., entrepreneurs capitalized on this effect and established “retreats” for the sniffling, sneezing gilded class. One attendee noted, “Only individuals of the highest intellectual grasp, and the strongest moral fibre have the disease.”

The reason only the upper classes were affected is that they had begun to clean up their environments. Cities in both the U.S. and U.K had begun to institute major sanitary reforms. For the first time in human evolution, certain microbes and parasites were being removed from the human organism. Our bodies would never work quite the same way again.

Our immune systems evolved to anticipate certain types of microbial and parasitic input—the bacteria, worms, etc. commonly found in vegetation, mud and water throughout evolution. Lack of exposure to these agents suppresses the natural development of our immune systems. It’s not just allergies that are affected, but also autoimmune diseases and many others.The way this works is enormously complicated and scientists don’t agree on some of the fine points. But nobody disputes the facts that people who grew up on farms have far fewer allergies than those who did not.

There’s not a lot you can do to ameliorate this situation (probably too late to take up farming), although some desperate people have taken to infecting themselves with worms. More on that later.

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