Hay Fever Research: A Brief Review A

Abstract

The cases of Botallus of Pavia in 1565 and that of Binningerus in 1673 are sometimes referred to in medical literature in support of the view that there are early records of what we now call allergic complaints, since both of these early physicians reported a woman patient with aversions to roses. However, the symptoms were not clearly stated; and, in an excellent review of the early history of hay fever allergy, Hurwitz, in 1929,¹ states that such occasional references may refer to a form of seasonal catarrh that need not necessarily have been an allergy. Likewise, authors who cite Hippocrates as being familiar with asthma² fail to note that the symptoms of allergy were not clearly recognized until the nineteenth century.