Tuesday, March 21, 2006

History: Pollen Used in First Allergy Shots

Doctors Take a New Stab at Allergy Shots
Steve Sternberg, USA Today, 3/20/2006

Nearly a century after two daring London doctors made medical history by injecting hay-fever patients with a watery extract of boiled pollen, Andy Saxon is trying to reinvent the allergy shot.

It's not that the "pollen vaccine" invented by Leonard Noon and John Freeman in 1911 doesn't work. It does. Until antihistamines came along in the 1950s, allergy shots were the only available allergy remedy. But their drawbacks, Saxon says, are nothing to sneeze at…

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