Sneezers

A Kentucky plumber's wife last week displaced a Wisconsin foster child as heroine of the nation's sneezing news. Daisy Jost, 15, of Chippewa Falls, Wis. had ceased sneezing when Mrs. Lonnie Dickson, 48, of Princeton, Ky., commenced to sneeze. Daisy held the time record (nine days); Mrs. Dickson set the frequency record (25 times a minute). While the excitement lasted friends advised all sorts of remedies--pressing the upper lip, cold baths, blowing cigaret smoke through the nose. Doctors cured both sneezers by giving them sedatives (which allowed them to sleep and gain strength) and letting the attacks blow themselves out.

In Daisy Jost's case the Mayo Clinic, urged by Daisy's physician, Dr. William Conrad George Henske, went to the rescue. Guided by Bacteriologist Edward Carl Rosenow, a zealot in finding new germs and new forms of old germs, the Mayo specialists infected rabbits with smears taken from Daisy Jost's throat & nose. Declared Dr. Rosenow: "This is the first time that tests in cases of sneezing have been conducted in this world, to my knowledge. We are hoping that we will find a streptococcus that causes sneezing, so that a serum may be devised to combat it." The infected rabbits sneezed, indicating that a germ made Daisy Jost sneeze. Dr. Rosenow's men decided that the germ was the same one responsible for sleeping sickness. Before they could attempt to make a serum, Daisy got well spontaneously.

Mrs. Dickson had only smalltown doctors to attend her -- Dr. William Patrick Morse, 59, who lives along Rural Delivery Route No. 1 outside Princeton; and Dr. William Louard Cash, 53, obstetrician, who is Mayor of Princeton. They soothed her with drugs for 120 hours, then found and removed from her nose her sneeze-maker--a wild hair.

A sneeze is a cough through the nose and, like coughing, a reflex effort to clear the air passages of an irritation. In sneezing the lungs fill with air, then forcibly expel the air. As the blast shoots up the windpipe, the tongue presses against the soft palate, thus shutting the mouth off from the throat. Only way for the blast to get out of the head is through the nose.

Muscles involved in sneezing get their nervous orders from the sneezing centre in the medulla oblongata, all important part of the central nervous system between the brain and spine. The sneezing centre in turn is roused by stimuli along the trigeminus nerve which carries sensations of touch, pain and temperature from the skin of the face, the adjoining parts of the scalp, the mucous membrane lining of nose & throat and from the teeth and eyes. A sudden bright light may cause a sneeze, as may a strong odor. Diseased teeth, sinuses, nose or throat may affect the trigeminus, arouse a prolonged fit of sneezing. An occasional sneeze is good exercise for deep chest and head muscles. This explains, apart from the narcotic effect of nicotine, the pleasure many derive from taking snuff. *

The custom of saying "God bless you" after a sneeze is credited to St. Gregory, who as Pope is supposed to have enjoined its use during a pestilence in which sneezing was a dire symptom. Aristotle however mentioned a similar custom among the Greeks. Thucydides described sneezes as symptoms in the great Athenian plague. To the Romans, a sneeze was an important omen, to be warded off with: "Absit omen." The Hindus say "Live," to which the customary reply is, "With you!" U. S. Indians, Parsees, many an Indian, African and Persian tribe believe that sneezing indicates the presence of evil spirits.

* The U. S. last year produced and consumed some 38 million pounds of snuff.

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