![]() For example, the reflex is now also known by the hilariously apt acronym Achoo, which stands for Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-opthalmic Outburst. We now know quite a bit more about the biology that underlies the photic sneeze reflex. Never mind that he wasn't exactly spot on either in the cause for the sunny sneeze – it's light, not heat – nor in the explanation, but it means that the reflex was known to some perhaps as early as the third century BC. The heat of a fire, on the other hand, not only vaporises those fluids, but also consumes them, thus drying out the nose, which actually inhibits a sneeze. In his Book of Problems, he (or possibly his students) asked, "why does the heat of the Sun provoke sneezing, and not the heat of the fire?" He concluded that the Sun's heat aerosolises the fluids within the nose, which triggers a sneeze. The tendency of some people to sneeze in response to bright light wasn't only just noticed in the last century the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle observed the phenomenon as well. In describing the phenomenon, he noted that the sneeze only occurs just as the patient becomes exposed to light they don't continue to sneeze even if continually awash in the bright glow of the Sun (or an ophthalmoscope). His continuing inquiry into six such photic sneezers established that they would also sneeze when exposed to bright sunlight, flash photography, and in one case, an ultraviolet light. He discovered that some patients sneezed when he shined his ophthalmoscope, used to examine the retina, into their eyes. The first formal investigation of the reflex was probably made in the early 1950s by a French researcher named Sedan. He found it of some comfort that "it occurs in normal people". Benbow suffered from a curious phenomenon where moving from darkness into very bright light, caused him to reflexively sneeze. The name he was referring to was "photic sneezing". "Even trivial symptoms are more easily tolerated if you can put a name to them," he wrote, "even if that produces only an illusory understanding of their significance". In 1991, a University of Manchester pathologist named Emyr Benbow wrote a letter to the editor of the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
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