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Whiplash, a relatively minor casualty of sneezing
If sneezing can be fatal, perhaps we should not be surprised that it can cause whiplash injuries. Although the link between sneezing and whiplash is not commonly discussed, most physiotherapists of ten or more years practice will have experience of treating patients who have suffered hyperflexion neck injuries in this way.
Maybe what is more surprising is that so many of us sneeze so many times in our lives and actually live to tell the tale with our heads still attached to our necks. Scientists at the JFK World Health Museum in Barrington, Illinois estimate the speed of a sneeze at a stratospheric 650 mph (roughly 85% of the speed of sound), which got me thinking that it might be worth NASA harnessing our noses to power the rockets of the future. I mean, if a sneeze is that powerful, perhaps it is could be the energy source of the future, and even solve the problems of global warming.
But before we revolutionise either the space race or the energy industry, let's go back to the issue of sneezing as fatal, as the last thing we want is any unnecessary deaths. I must admit that I have a particular personal interest in this, but more later.
There have been numerous examples throughout history of people literally "dying sneezing". In 2006 a British teenager died after sneezing twice then hearing a popping noise in his ear, while across the world sneezing has been cited as the cause of accident in numerous car crash compensation claims. Then there are the more unusual sneezing accidents.
This is where my interest comes in. Family mythology has it that my great-grandfather, a man of slight proportions and disproportionately loud nasal expirations finally had his life ended after 66 earth-shaking years when he succumbed to a sneezing fit while standing on a balcony in Paris enjoying his first ever holiday. The sheer force of it, while perhaps not any more intense than it had ever been, combined with circumstances the twilit second-floor balcony, the uncertain absinthe light and his work-wearied body to send him toppling to an abject and abysmal end in an impoverished Parisian hospital so out of keeping with the spirit of his formerly indomitable life.
It seems that I, my father, and my four brothers have all inherited the gene for monstrous sneezing. And while this has had the inevitable effect of making us wary of heights when suffering from hay fever or head cold, and making family get-togethers at winter time a threat to the structural integrity of even the sturdiest of buildings, it has also been a source of sometimes apoplectic embarrassment. I dread, when, for example, I'm travelling on the Underground, and I feel the coming of that familiar insidious and ineluctable nasal tingling which always precedes the most mighty of nasal paroxysms. Once, while travelling on a bus in Bombay, an expiration of my preposterously explosive proboscis actually caused four passengers to fall to the floor in the mistaken belief that a bomb had gone off.
I believe that it is about time people who suffer my predicament were given the recognition they deserve, as it can be a real impediment to the smooth progress of a life.
Just last year, at harvest time, my hay fever actually became so acute and my sneezing so prolific that my boss asked me to work out of the office, apparently my binge-sneezing was becoming too much of a distraction and causing some of the timider members of staff to feel anxious.
All of which makes me feel strong empathy for someone I read about only recently, one of sneezing's historical casualties, Miss Della Chovers. Although "whiplash injury" was not yet a term coined to describe that particular kind of neck injury, I feel it is reasonable to conjecture that such an epic fit of sneezing may well have done for Miss Chover's neck what car accidents do to the necks of so many in Britain.
Sneezing to Death: Strange Malady of Young Woman in Texas
Wichita, Kansas., Aug. 5. A case that has so far baffled the most eminent of physicians in this part of the State is that of Miss Della Chovers, who for the past four days has sneezed constantly. Her life is despaired of.
She was overcome by heat on Monday afternoon. When she had been restored to consciousness she commenced sneezing and found that she couldn't stop. Medical advice was procured and the doctors have been vainly trying to stop the sneezing. Occasionally there is a slight cessation between paroxysms, but about the time the doctors think they have it stopped it begins again with renewed fury.
Miss Chovers, across the chasm of a brutal century, my heart goes out to you, I know what it is like. In fact, I think I might even love you.
