Prior to the 19th century and the period of Industrial Revolution (c. 1760-1840), medical literature on hay fever was relatively sparse. Scientists and physicians studied allergic diseases less during this time than later, and therefore these diseases were relatively less recognized in society. After the 1810s, however, increasing numbers of scientists and physicians published their research data and ideas about the cause of hay fever and treatment protocols. They advocated for therapies based on what they thought the cause of hay fever was; some therapies included medications (antispasmodics, narcotics, expectorants, emetics), rest and isolation, bloodletting, and irrigating nasal passages with caustic substances.
In the book Better than Gold; or Light Out of Darkness, Dr. E. C. Singer provided instructions for the preparation of an inhaler with herbs like bloodroot and goldenseal (which is still used in some herbal remedies for colds and allergies). Pediatrician W. C. Hollopeter, the author of Hay-fever and its Successful Treatments, believed allergic diseases to be nervous conditions related to neurasthenia and others. He pushed for medicines that included arsenic, strychnine, and quinine.
By the mid-19th century, hay fever had become associated with the upper classes. Many people—even people of science—believed that only the well off and educated suffered from seasonal allergies. Physicians observed that most of their allergy patients were wealthy and white. Without accounting for the lack of access to healthcare that the poor and people of color faced, they concluded that the moneyed were biologically more prone to hay fever.
Every spring and fall, rich people with stuffy noses and watery eyes would seek refuge in the mountains or by the shore. A hay fever vacation industry developed for the leisure class, concentrated in areas far away from both the urban masses and the tuberculosis patients at the sanitoriums in the countryside. White Mountain, New Hampshire and areas similarly remote became social hubs of the elite.
Most people with hay fever could not afford a months-long mountain getaway. For them, slick marketing and financial accessibility made patent medicines an attractive alternative. These “cure-alls” had proprietary formulas, making it difficult for the consumer to know the contents of each preparation, as companies weren’t forthcoming with that information. Many of these elixirs were ineffective and some were dangerous.