Simple folk remedies: 09 (hay fever) (London / Vermont)

 

I used to suffer very seriously from hay fever.  

Not only did my season start earlier and end later than most people’s, my symptoms were also quite severe.  

Apart from the usual sneezing, runny nose and itchy eyes (but constant in my case for all three), my scalp would itch (even right after a hair wash, so no, not dirty hair); my ear tunnels and the back of my throat would itch way inside, making me want to stick my hand right inside/down to scratch.

One November day, I discovered a greengrocer’s that sold bags of fruit cheaply — sort of bulk discount at £1 for a bag of 10 or 12, a new thing in the mid-80s.  I’d buy a bag of lemons every Saturday, and spend Sunday squeezing them for my week’s supply of lemon juice.  To sweeten it, I added honey.  Every morning, I’d pour out about 2 inches of this lemon-and-honey concoction into a litre bottle and add water.  (In the summer, ice cubes instead, for a cold drink as the ice melted through the day.)  

Come March, when my hay fever didn’t happen, I thought it was because the pollen count had been low, but a student said it’d actually been quite high.  

It then occurred to me that it must’ve been the lemon-and-honey concoction I’d been drinking the last few months.  (Hay fever jabs are meant to be done in November or December, way before the season starts, or it’ll be too late to be effective.)

Then I came across a little book written by a doctor in Vermont in the 1950s.  He said he noticed the farmhands didn’t suffer from hay fever, then observed that they chewed a piece of honeycomb throughout the day.  

He went on to make a concoction that’s marketed as honegar.  (It’s just honey and cider vinegar, so it’d be much cheaper to buy the separate ingredients and make your own.)  My own concoction is honey and lemon, so it must be the honey that’s the active ingredient.  

I came up with this theory: if bees spend all their time sticking their noses into pollen and yet don’t sneeze themselves to death, they must’ve built up some resistance, which then gets transferred to the honey they produce.

(London, 1980s; Vermont, 1950s)