Some physicians have long insisted that they could relieve hay fever by diet. For instance, I once asked a physician of large general practice what he did for hay fever. He smiled in an incredulous way that I have noticed before among people who never had hay fever and replied, "I find that if people will stop eating strawberries and not eat too much meat, they soon get rid of their hay fever." This answer surprised me for I knew that in his long practice, he must have seen many cases of hay fever and my experience had been that diet had no influence on the symptoms. Then, there is Professor Dunn, already quoted in Chapter IX, who believes in the uric acid theory and says that, in his opinion, "hay fever is the result of improper eating and living." He has been able to prevent the annual attacks by using cold baths and excluding meat, tea, coffee and alcohol from the diet. Any patient who can get rid of the annoying symptoms of hay fever by such simple means of diet and bathing should be urged to try it, whether he believes or disbelieves in the "uric acid poisoning" on which the treatment is based. My own experience leads me to believe that most hay fever patients require something more than dietary regulation to control the disease. For instance, in my own case, the disease appeared at an age when I had never taken tea, coffee or alcohol, during the summer vacation when I was living a hygienic out-door life, playing ball, cycling and swimming every day in the salt water. I remember one summer in camp by a lake among the pines, in which I lived Dr. Dunn's hygienic life for many weeks, drinking no tea, coffee or alcohol, eating chiefly fresh fish and green vegetables and swimming daily. My experience can be paralleled by many hay fever patients that as long as I remained among the pines, I was in perfect health but on going down into the valley, one breath of fragrant wind blowing over the fields would cause instant itching and swelling of eyes and nose and all the previous hygienic life up at the lake was no protection against the disorder. I have seen the hereditary form develop in three children of one family while they were at the seashore, bathing daily in salt water and living a care-free, active, out-door life, never taking tea, coffee or alcohol and not much meat. So, I concluded long ago that there must be two kinds of hay fever, one kind curable by diet, bathing and exercise and another kind in which habits of living and eating made no difference; and I had seen mostly the other kind. Now, there may well be cases of hay fever as there are known to be cases of that other anaphylaxis, asthma, that are pure examples of food anaphylaxis. In such a case, detecting the irritating food and removing it from the diet is the proper path to cure. The error in our former practice was to divide foods into good and bad for certain diseases. We should rather think of foods as good or bad for a particular patient.