Since 20th March, when the Northern hemisphere observed and celebrated the Vernal, also known as the Spring Equinox, we can now safely welcome the spring season.
Spring is naturally a synonym for both nature’s and personal awakening – nature awakens for a new cycle of changes while we, people, welcome new dreams and perspectives.
As days get longer and weather warmer, trees blossom and all living creatures thrive in the sun. A quite idyllic scenario, which, indeed, has a positive influence over our general attitude towards life.
But, as dreamy and desirable as it sounds, spring has its downsides too – well, who doesn’t?!
One of the main issues people struggle with during spring time are the various allergies that are activated with the change of seasons. And spring allergies do not leave pets out, cats and dogs suffer seasonal allergies as well and pollen allergy might have even severe effects on them than on people.
That hypersensitivity can really spoil the party. It is the time of much sniffing and sneezing, and either congested or constantly runny nose are uncomfortable, to say the least. The main trigger of spring season allergy symptoms is the exposure to tree and weeds pollen, that is carried by the wind for miles on end.
The etymological history of the word allergy is fairly short, as the word itself is a relatively new one.
The term was born in only 1906, when the Austrian pediatrician Clemens Peter Freiherr von Pirquet observed how patients who had previously received horse serum injections or smallpox vaccine had more severe reactions to a second injection.
To describe this hypersensitivity reaction, he coined the word allergie by combining the Greek allos ‘other, different, strange’ and the German word energy which stems from the Greek ergon ‘activity, work’.
In the following year, Pirquet discovered that tuberculin, the extract from the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, leads to a similar hypersensitivity reaction and based on this discovery, Charles Mantoux went further to lead to the development of the Mantoux test in 1907, in which tuberculin is injected into the skin to identify a tuberculosis infection.
In English, the term allergy is a borrowing from German and was used for the first time to define allergy as the above described sensitiveness of the tuberculous to tuberculin. The publication appeared in the year of the discovery, in the January issue of he Journal of the American Medical Association, 1907: “‘Allergie’ represents the extra-sensitiveness to a reaction, as, for instance, the sensitiveness of the tuberculous to tuberculin.”
The compound allergy test appeared first in print in a 1938 issue of the American Journal of Surgery: “The dietary treatment of chronic sinusitis..entails first, an allergy test.”
In 1950, the Science news-letter, months after the discovery of cortisone, introduced the term allergy sufferers along with hopes for the relief of their symptoms: ”Allergy sufferers..may be helped from the discovery of a gland chemical now called cortisone.“
