HAY FEVER, Hay Asthma, or Summer Catarrh, a catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the upper respiratory tract, due to the action of the pollen of certain grasses. It is often associated with asthmatic attacks. The disease affects certain families, and is hereditary in about one-third of the cases. It is more common among women than men, city than country dwellers, and the educated and highly nervous than the lower classes. It has no connexion with the coryzas that are produced in nervous people by the odour of cats, &c. The complaint has been investigated by Professor W. P. Dunbar of Hamburg, who has shown that it is due to the pollens of certain grasses (notably rye) and plants, and that the severity of the attack is directly proportional to the amount of pollen in the air. He has isolated an albuminoid poison which, when applied to the nose of a susceptible individual, causes an attack, while there is no result in the case of a normal person. By injecting the poison into animals, he has obtained an anti-toxin, which is capable of aborting an attack of hay fever. The symptoms are those commonly experienced in the case of a severe cold, consisting of headache, violent sneezing and watery discharge from the nostrils and eyes, together with a hard dry cough, and occasionally severe asthmatic paroxysms. The period of liability to infection naturally coincides with the pollen season.
The radical treatment is to avoid vegetation. Local treatment consisting of thorough destruction of the sensitive area of the mucous membrane of the nose often produces good results. There are various drugs, the best of which are cocaine and the extract of the suprarenal body, which, when applied to the nose, are sometimes effectual; in practice, however, it is found that larger and larger doses are required, and that sooner or later they afford no relief. The same remarks apply to a number of patent specifics, of which the principal constituent is one of the above drugs. An additional and stronger objection to the use of cocaine is that a “habit” is often contracted, with the most disastrous results. Finally Dunbar’s serum may be applied to the nose and eyes on rising, and on the slightest suggestion of irritation during the day; it will, in the large majority of cases, be found to be quite effectual.
HAYLEY, WILLIAM (1745-1820), English writer, the friend and biographer of William Cowper, was born at Chichester on the 9th of November 1745. He was sent to Eton in 1757, and to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1763; his connexion with the Middle Temple, London, where he was admitted in 1766, was merely nominal. In 1767 he left Cambridge and went to live in London. Two years later he married Eliza, daughter of Thomas Ball, dean of Chichester. His private means enabled Hayley to live on his patrimonial estate at Eartham, Sussex, and he retired there in 1774. He had already written many occasional poetical pieces, when in 1771 his tragedy, The Afflicted Father, was rejected by David Garrick. In the same year his translation of Pierre Corneille’s Rodogune as The Syrian Queen was also declined by George Colman. Hayley won the fame he enjoyed amongst his contemporaries by his poetical Essays and Epistles; a Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (1780), addressed to his friend George Romney, an Essay on History (1780), in three epistles, addressed to Edward Gibbon; Essay on Epic Poetry (1782) addressed to William Mason; A Philosophical Essay on Old Maids (1785); and the Triumphs of Temper (1781). The last mentioned work was so popular as to run to twelve or fourteen editions; together with the Triumphs of Music (Chichester, 1804) it was ridiculed by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. So great was Hayley’s fame that on Thomas Warton’s death in 1790 he was offered the laureateship, which he refused. In 1792, while writing the Life of Milton (1794), Hayley made Cowper’s acquaintance. A warm friendship sprang up between the two which lasted till Cowper’s death in 1800. Hayley indeed was mainly instrumental in getting Cowper his pension. In 1800 Hayley also lost his natural son, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, to whom he was devotedly attached. He had been a pupil of John Flaxman’s, to whom Hayley’s Essay on Sculpture (1800) is addressed. Flaxman introduced William Blake to Hayley, and after the latter had moved in 1800 to his “marine hermitage” at Felpham, Sussex, Blake settled near him for three years to engrave the illustrations for the Life of Cowper. This, Hayley’s best known work, was published in 1803-1804 (Chichester) in 3 vols. In 1805 he published Ballads founded on Anecdotes of Animals (Chichester), with illustrations by Blake, and in 1809 The Life of Romney. For the last twelve years of his life Hayley received an allowance for writing his Memoirs. He died at Felpham on the 12th of November 1820. Hayley’s first wife died in 1797; her mind had been seriously affected, and since 1789 they had been separated. He married in 1809 Mary Welford, but they also separated after three years. He left no children.
Hayley’s Poetical Works were published in 3 vols. (1785); his Poems and Plays in 6 vols. (1788).
See Memoirs ... of William Hayley ... and Memoirs of his son T. A. Hayley, ed. John Johnson (2 vols., 1823) (containing many of Hayley’s letters); an article on these memoirs by Robert Southey in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi., 1825; William Blake, by A. C. Swinburne (2nd ed., 1868, pp. 28 et seq.); Life of William Blake, by Alexander Gilchrist (vol. i., 1880), with some of Blake’s letters to Hayley; The Correspondence of William Cowper, arranged by Thomas Wright (vol. iv., 1904), containing many letters to Hayley.
HAYM, RUDOLF (1821-1901), German publicist and philosopher, was born at Grünberg, in Silesia, on the 5th of October 1821, and died at St Anton (Arlberg) on the 27th of August 1901. He studied philosophy and theology at Halle and Berlin, and lived at Halle during 1846 and 1847. He was a member of the National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848, and wrote an account of the proceedings from the standpoint of the Right Centre. From 1851 he lectured in literature and philosophy at the university of Halle, and became professor in 1860. His writings are biographical and critical, devoted mainly to modern German philosophy and literature. In 1870 he published a masterly history of the Romantic school. He also wrote biographies of W. von Humboldt (1856), Hegel (1857), Schopenhauer (1864), Herder (1877-1885), Max Duncker (1890). In 1901 he published Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben.
HAYNAU, JULIUS JACOB (1786-1853), Austrian general, was the natural son of the landgrave—afterwards elector—of Hesse-Cassel, William IX. He entered the Austrian army as an infantry officer in 1801, and saw much service in the Napoleonic wars. He was wounded at Wagram, and distinguished during the operations in Italy in 1813 and 1814. Between 1815 and 1847 he rose to the rank of field marshal lieutenant. A violent temper, which he made no attempt to control or conceal, led him into trouble with his superiors. His hatred of revolutionary principles was fanatical. When the insurrectionary movements of 1848 broke out in Italy, his known zeal for the cause of legitimacy, as much as his reputation as an officer, marked him out for command. He fought with success in Italy, but was chiefly noted for the severity he showed in suppressing and punishing a rising in Brescia. It ought to be remembered that the mob of Brescia had massacred invalid Austrian soldiers in the hospital, a provocation which always leads to reprisals. In June 1849 Haynau was called to Vienna to command first an army of reserve, and then in the field against the Hungarians. His successes against the declining revolutionary cause were numerous and rapid. In Hungary, as in Italy, he was accused of brutality. It was, for instance, asserted that he caused women who showed any sympathy with the insurgents to be whipped. His ostentatious hatred of the revolutionary parties marked him out as the natural object for these accusations. On the restoration of peace he was appointed to high command in Hungary. His temper quickly led him into quarrels with the minister of war, and he resigned his command in 1850. He then travelled abroad. The refugees had spread his evil reputation. In London he was attacked and beaten by Messrs Barclay & Perkins’ draymen when visiting the brewery, and he was saved from mob violence in Brussels with some difficulty. He died on the 14th of March 1853. On the 11th of October 1808 Haynau had married Thérèse von Weber, the daughter of Field Marshal Lieutenant Weber, who was slain at Aspern. She died, leaving one daughter, in 1850.