Since it is allergy season why not give a quick history lesson on allergy disorders. According to this intresting information, allergies were diagnosed mainly among the upper class.

"One hundred years ago, an Austrian doctor named Clemens von Pirquet coined the term 'allergy' to describe how the human body, once exposed to a foreign substance, could inexplicably develop a heightened, occasionally fatal, sensitivity to it," writes Drake Bennett in The Boston Globe.

"At the time, according to Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady, a forthcoming book by the University of Exeter historian of medicine Mark Jackson, such disorders were understood to be uncommon. Hay fever and asthma, for example, were diagnosed primarily among the leisured rich. . . . According to Morell Mackenzie, a leading late-19th century English physician, hay fever was 'almost exclusively confined to persons of cultivation.' Today, of course, and especially this time of year, allergies carry no cachet."

Is posh sneezing a thing of the past?  Definitely – everyone, rich or poor, complains of some kind of allergy or another these days. It must be the price we pay for cultivation.