How Hay Fever Got Its Name: One Doctor, Thirty-Eight Junes
Every June for thirty-eight years, the same thing happened to Dr John Bostock, and in 1819 he stood up in front of London's medical establishment and presented the case — his own — because the medical literature of the world contained essentially nothing about it. How hay fever got its name is usually told as a quaint footnote about farmers and haystacks. The real story is stranger and better: the man who gave the disease its first medical description disputed the hay theory himself, proposed a Latin name that history ignored, and spent nine years hunting for a second sufferer to prove he wasn't imagining it. The name that stuck was the one he didn't coin, blamed on the cause he didn't believe in. Medicine has been apologising for the misnomer ever since — and using it anyway.
Key takeaways
- In 1819, Dr John Bostock presented his own case — thirty-eight Junes of sneezing, itching, streaming eyes and chest tightness — because the world's medical literature contained essentially nothing about the disease.
- Bostock doubted the hay theory himself and proposed the Latin name catarrhus aestivus, summer catarrh, in 1828; the folk name "hay fever" won anyway.
- It took until 1873 for Charles Blackley to prove experimentally that the culprit was neither hay nor heat but pollen.
- The winning name is a double misnomer: hay fever is not caused by hay and involves no fever — the clinical name is allergic rhinitis.
1819: "A Case of a Periodical Affection of the Eyes and Chest"
On 16 March 1819, Bostock read his paper to the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. It was published that year in the society's Medico-Chirurgical Transactions (vol. X, pp. 161–165) under a title of magnificent vagueness: "Case of a Periodical Affection of the Eyes and Chest." The patient was identified only as "JB" — a man of "spare and rather delicate habit," aged 46. As the medical historian JMS Pearce recounts in Hektoen International, the initials concealed the author himself, and the history was devastating in its regularity: every June since the age of eight — thirty-eight summers — the patient was visited by sneezing, itching, streaming eyes and chest tightness that arrived with the season and left with it.
Bostock had tried, across those decades, essentially everything his era offered: opium, purging, topical bleeding, courses of mercury, cold baths. None gave, in his words, "distinct or permanent benefit." The one thing that worked was geography — confining himself indoors for six weeks eased the symptoms, and summers spent at a clifftop house near Ramsgate, on the Kentish coast, eased him too — an 1819 preview of the pollen-avoidance logic this whole field still runs on: the trigger, whatever it was, lived in the air of particular places, and leaving the place left the disease behind. And he opened with a confession that startles even now: except for a single observation by Heberden, he told the society, "I have not met with anything that can be supposed to refer to it in any author, ancient or modern." A disease suffered by millions had, in 1819, a literature of one case: his.
How Hay Fever Got Its Name Anyway: The Name He Chose, the Name That Won
Nine years later, in 1828, Bostock returned to the same society with a second paper, "On Catarrhus Aestivus, or Summer Catarrh" (Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, 1828, vol. XII, pp. 437–446). In the interval he had done the legwork of a one-man research programme, collecting, as Charles Blackley's later history of the disease records, "distinct accounts of eighteen cases, besides about ten others in which the accounts were less perfect" — roughly twenty-eight fellow sufferers, found in nine years of asking. The disease was real, rare-seeming, and, Bostock insisted, misattributed by the public taking shape around it: laypeople were beginning to call it "hay fever," after the popular idea that the scent of new hay during haymaking season irritated the body. Bostock doubted hay was the agent at all; his own suspicion fell on the heat of summer — hence catarrhus aestivus, summer catarrh, a name about season rather than suspect.
History voted the other way. The physician-geologist James MacCulloch used the term "hay fever" in print in 1828, calling it "a well-known disorder" — well-known to the public, that is, while medicine was still at twenty-eight cases. The folk name had everything Bostock's Latin didn't: it was vivid, it was wrong in a memorable way, and it was already in the newspapers — The Times was reporting by 1827 that the Duke of Devonshire was "afflicted with what is vulgarly called the Hay-fever." Within a generation, "hay fever" had buried "summer catarrh" completely. It took until 1873 for Charles Blackley — whose own story we tell in our Charles Blackley profile — to prove experimentally that the culprit was neither hay nor heat but pollen, and by then the misnomer was unkillable. The fuller arc, from ancient mentions to modern counting, lives in our history of pollen.
Two grace notes complete the naming story. The first is that Bostock was not quite the first to notice — he was the first to publish a case properly. Pearce's history reaches back to Leonardo Botallo, the Piedmontese physician whose 1564 treatise on catarrh described symptoms brought on by the odour of roses — a "rose catarrh" two and a half centuries before Bostock, filed in the literature and forgotten, which is exactly the fate Bostock's paper nearly shared. The second is that the correct suspect was named in print surprisingly early: by the 1830s the London physician John Elliotson was discussing the condition and pointing, with what a contemporary called sagacity, at pollen as its probable cause. Elliotson's pointer went the way of Botallo's roses — noted, unproven, shelved — until Blackley's experiments made it undeniable forty years later. The name "hay fever" thus survived not one but two correct challenges: Bostock's rival name, and Elliotson's rival cause. A catchy error, it turns out, can outrun a quiet truth for a very long time.
| Year | Milestone in the naming |
|---|---|
| 1564 | Leonardo Botallo describes a "rose catarrh" brought on by the odour of roses |
| 1819 | Bostock presents his own case — the first proper published description of the disease |
| 1828 | Bostock proposes catarrhus aestivus; MacCulloch uses "hay fever" in print |
| 1830s | John Elliotson points at pollen as the probable cause |
| 1873 | Blackley proves experimentally that pollen is the culprit |
How Hay Fever Got Its Name to Stick: Why the Wrong Name Refuses to Die
It is worth sitting with how complete the misnomer is. Hay fever is not caused by hay — most sufferers react to grass, tree or weed pollen, and hay itself is a bystander. It is not a fever — temperature is not part of the condition. And Bostock's core observations, by contrast, were exactly right: the strict seasonality, the June peak for a grass-pollen sufferer in England, the relief of avoidance. The man got the disease right and the name wrong; the crowd got the name and garbled the cause; science spent fifty years sorting out which parts to keep.
The modern descendants of Bostock's lonely paper are the counting networks that turn his "periodical affection" into daily numbers — the stations whose readings drive the Boston, New York and Philadelphia pages his professional descendants read each spring, and the national picture in the city rankings. And when a sufferer's own "periodical affection" needs a modern workup, the allergy specialists in our directory are practising the discipline Bostock started by standing up, alone, in 1819. This article is general information only and is not medical advice.
The compromise medicine eventually reached is still visible in every clinic: the clinical name is allergic rhinitis — accurate, Latinate, and used by almost nobody outside a medical chart — while "hay fever" owns the waiting room, the pharmacy aisle and the family vocabulary. Bostock's fate repeats in that split. His careful term died; his careful observations did not. The condition he described as a case of one is now counted among the most common chronic complaints in the Western world, and it answers, two centuries on, to the nickname he tried to talk the public out of.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who first described hay fever medically?
Dr John Bostock, in a paper read to the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London on 16 March 1819 and published as "Case of a Periodical Affection of the Eyes and Chest." The patient identified only as "JB" was Bostock himself, describing symptoms that had visited him every June since the age of eight.
Did Bostock believe hay caused the disease?
No. He doubted hay was the agent and suspected the heat of summer, which is why the name he proposed in 1828 was catarrhus aestivus — summer catarrh, a name about season rather than suspect. Laypeople were already calling it "hay fever," after the popular idea that the scent of new hay irritated the body.
When was pollen proven to be the cause?
In 1873, when Charles Blackley's experiments established that the culprit was neither hay nor heat but pollen. The London physician John Elliotson had pointed at pollen as the probable cause in the 1830s, but the pointer went unproven and shelved for forty years.
Is hay fever caused by hay, and is it a fever?
Neither. Most sufferers react to grass, tree or weed pollen, and hay itself is a bystander; temperature is not part of the condition. The clinical name is allergic rhinitis — accurate, and used by almost nobody outside a medical chart.
How hay fever got its name, then: a doctor described himself because no one else could, chose a careful name nobody kept, and lost the naming rights to a haystack. Two centuries later, the world's sneezers still use the crowd's word. Bostock would presumably like the science better than the name. He earned both.
**Bostock had to guess his season from memory; you don't have to. Free pollen counts and 5-day forecasts for your city and cities worldwide: PollenAtlas.com.**