So, in preparing to write a fic based on the Masterpiece Classics series 'Downton Abbey', I decided to do a little research into attitudes and etiquette surrounding sneezing in Victorian England.
Little did I know I would find the most incredibly descriptive accounts of hayfever in a book published in 1876 titled:
'Hay-fever; or, Summer catarrh: its nature and treatments including early form , or "rose cold"; the later form, or "autumnal catarrh"; and a middle form, or July cold, hitherto undescribed'
Long title!
Anyway, you can read it all here: http://books.google.com/books?id=MKIVAAAAY...p;q&f=false but I've pasted some of the best ones below...this is the stuff fetishists dream about. Unreal, toe-curling lovely stuff...enjoy! 
You never before even suspected what it really was to sneeze. If the door is open, you sneeze. If a pane of glass is gone, you sneeze. If you look into the sunshine, you sneeze. ... If you sneeze once, you sneeze twenty times. It is riot of sneezes. First a single one, like a leader in a flock of sheep, bolts over; and then, in spite of all you can do, the whole flock, fifty by count, come dashing over—in twos, in fives, in bunches of twenty."In hay-fever the sneezes come not singly, but in a series, following each other in rapid succession. They are excited by a draught of air, by dust, by exposure to sunlight or to gaslight, to smoke, to the odor of flowers, to the emanations of hay or grass, or indeed to any one or to all of the many exciting causes of this malady. A change of position, a trivial disturbance of mind or body, may bring on at any moment a torrent of sneezes, which do not, like those of ordinary catarrh, yield to the process of compressing the nose or the upper lip.
The late W. C. Roberts, M.D., a scholarly and eminent physician, was a victim of the later form of hay-fever, and has given the following very^ graphic picture of his sufferings. The account is taken from the New York Medical Gazette"Sweating as I do so profusely during the summer months, and until then freely exposing myself to draughts without the slightest inconvenience, and rarely catching or suffering from colds at any other time, winter or summer—no sooner do the nights in August begin to grow chilly, and my relaxed cutaneous surface and sudoriferous tubes become refrigerated and contracted, say about the 20th, then my eyes begin to itch and stream, my nose to run and ' crow like chanticleer,' and my lungs to heave and whistle like those of a 'broken-winded horse.' I become the victim of a ' crying cold,' which I well know is to last me for a month, or more, with little or no abatemehopes of amendment. But in the very midst of my self-congratulations, after a few hours of comparative ease, some little imp, straight from Tartarus, plunges nt; with slight temporary remissions only, which, if I were not taught by long experience to know that they are fallacious, might raise in me delusive into the inner canthus of my eyes a white-hot needle, and tickles my nostrils; instantly they become suffused with scalding tears, which deluge my spectacles; a dozen or more sneezes follow in rapid and apparently ceaseless succession; a profuse sweat follows; streams of clear mucus flow from my nostrils upon my book or paper, and half-a-dozen handkerchiefs are at once called into requisition; an interval, more or less long, occurs, after which the paroxysm is repeated; and so it goes on, day after day, and hour after hour, until the disease has run its appointed course, and subsides, like a partnership, by its own limitation. During all this time weak and rather sore eyes, an itching and running nose, stuffing of the nasal passages, occasional violent fits of sneezing, headache, weariness and indolence of mind and body, a general feeling of good-for-nothingness; distaste of and unfitness for society, and an inability to look people in the face; cough and asthmatic wheezings, and a cold and clammy moisture, are the concomitants of my unhappy condition. Draughts of air are intolerable, and increase my catarrh; the very waving of a fan annoys me; such is the susceptibility of my skin that the application of a cold, wet part of a soiled handkerchief to my face irritates me. Another petty misery is the excessive coldness of the end of my nose, sensible to myself and to others, who are kind enough always to inform me that it is like a dog's. I have not seen this symptom, which I look upon as the pathognomonic one, mentioned by others, and I desire to have due credit awarded me for the discovery. It is amazing with what suddenness and rapidity the congestion of the Schneiderian membrane occurs—sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other; a little itching in the nostrils, and, presto! the sneezing begins, the stream issues, and the eyes follow suit. It is needless to say that I am never without a handkerchief to my nose, and two or three in my pockets; and I relay them, as postilions do their horses, spreading one out to dry white another is in use. Light does not annoy me, per se, as it does the wife of one of my confrires, a fellow-sufferer, who has a true photophobia, and has to have the room darkened; and in this respect I should do well enough, were it not for the weeping and irritability of my eyes, which keeps me wiping them constantly, winking and blinking, like a cat in the sun. But my cross in life is DUST—I print it in capitals. So surely as I go out at midday into one of our large thoroughfares, which has not been recently watered, or ride in a dusty railroad car, etc., so surely does every particle of dust make straight for my canthi, with the effect of a grain of cayenne-pepper; and for the rest of that day closed itching eyes, a darkened room, snuffling and sneezing, and an irritable temper are my portion. I pray for rain with all the fervor of the old Scotch clergyman, without caring whether or not it should eventuate in a deluge.
"If, in my walks, I see men sweeping a street, and clouds of dust arising, I shun it as I would a rattlesnake; and if I see a building in process of demolition, I go a block out of the way to avoid it. I always walk on the shady side of the street, if there is one, and select a well-watered street if possible, or keep well to windward. I can not begin to express the agony which on certain occasions of my life I have suffered from this cause, and therefore I confine myself within doors as much as possible. Dust and draughts are my particular aversions. I could not smell a rose or eat a peach unpeeled, the hairs of which irritate my fauces (and, by this way, I now think that my catarrh does come in peach time, which may have something to do with it); nor inhale ipecac; and snuff, I believe, would make me sneeze my head off. Nothing that I have ever snuffed up my nostrils has failed to injure me; I once almost suffered suffocation from an astringent injection prepared for me by a druggist friend.
A lawyer of Cincinnati, Ohio, gives the following report of the origin of his sufferings:"As a further answer to question 32: During convalescence in September, after an attack of fever of a typhoidal type lasting through August, two years before hay-fever developed itself, I observed a tendency to sneeze on exposure to draughts of air. This was stopped by putting on a thick coat and keeping out of draughts, and gave no annoyance. Late in August of the next year, one single fit of sneezing— all within the limit of one half-hour, occurring on a railroad ride of one hour in length—of furious violence, and so prolonged as to be a chief part of my occupation during the trip, and followed, I believe, by a few hours of slight hoarseness, was also noticeable. The next year the hay-fever was developed. I have suspected that this typhoid-fever, with possibly the veratrum which reduced it, had something to do with preparing my system to receive the hay-fever.
"Of late years the paroxysms of sneezing are very rasping to the throat, rapidly produce some hoarseness, and seem to make it less easy than usual to draw full breaths for some time. The eyes are red and suffused, the nose somewhat red, the feelings and countenance dismal; and an indescribable feeling of discomfort and depression is all through the head, and apparently through the whole nervous system."
"Constant sneezing, fever in the head, headache, pain in the eyesockets, running at eyes and nose, excessive nervousness, etc., are the symptoms. Attack comes on in July, but at no particular date. Have been a sufferer ever since I can recollect any thing about it. In boyhood could not feed a horse with hay without sneezing; and pitching a single load of hay would send me to bed for the rest of the day, and would be sick for a day or two. Frequently, especially of late years, I will have no symptom of it at all, and in an hour will be suffering intensely—go to bed sick; next morning no trace of it left. The last few years this is the usual form with me. More or less cough for thirty years. The cough is increased by the attack. Always worse by day, and from three or four o'clock till bed-time. In-door dust from sweeping, or even the throwing down the clothes from the bed, the fine particles floating in the autumn atmosphere, and both fresh and old hay, excite the paroxysms.
"CHICAGO, May 23d, 1S76. "DEAR SIR,—Yours of the 15th inst. reached me via Paris yesterday. I take pleasure in giving you all the information I can. I think the only benefit from letting the beard grow is from the protection afforded by the mustache to the sensitive nerves of the upper lip, which are much exposed after shaving. This renders the patient a little less liable to take cold with the changes of the weather. I have suffered from the disease—' catarrh,' 'hay-fever,' 'harvest cold,' or whatever its name may be—since 1857. While in the army, living out-doors, sleeping under a tree or tent-fly, I was free from it, or at least from its effects, and I believe life in the camp would be the only remedy for my case. I have tried three or four kinds of catarrh snuff, each of which greatly aggravated the disease. I believe Dr. Seeley's course of bathings, dietings, etc., etc., recommended with the use of his patent remedy, would kill me. I have found more relief from insufflations of weak brine from the palm of the hand than from any other remedy. I think my case peculiar. A dust of any kind aggravates it. The secretions, which are copious, are not at all discolored, nor is the breath in the least offensive; but when under the effect of a cold I sneeze constantly—sometimes 250 to 300 times a day. I should like to hear from you and learn what you know of this terrible disease, for I think the man who discovers a remedy for it will be a benefactor. Very truly yours,"GEORGE R. LODGE.
"P. S.—I do not exaggerate when I say that one half the people of Chicago suffer from this disease. G. R. L."
"The disease begins to grow less severe from about the first week in September, at the same time that the slight cough begins. When I succeed in avoiding fresh accessions to the 'influenza, it grows gradually better—as I express it, from a six- or eight- or ten-handkerchief activity, to a two- or three-handkerchief degree—by the fifteenth or twentieth of the month, and it is all gone before the first of October. This in the climate of Massachusetts. Inflammation of the eyes, with violent itching, often accompanies the decrease of the influenza.
"IN my childhood and youth I was subject to what are called bad colds in the summer; but I had never heard of the rose cold, and cannot therefore identify those colds with the rose season. It may have been in 1833, perhaps as late as—no later than—1836, that I learned that there was such a disease as the rose cold. At that time there was very little culture of roses out of season. With me the cold commenced with the earliest blossoming of the small red rose, which was the first to make its appearance, and lasted through the rose season, leaving me in my usual health about the time that many of my friends began to suffer from what they called the hay cold (which, however, did not begin till the hay harvest was almost over). During this season (the rose season) there was great swelling of the nostrils and face, an oppressive sense of fulness in the head, an inflamed condition of the eyes, with frequent paroxysms of sneezing, and a discharge from the nose which made half a dozen pocket handkerchiefs a day no more than a normal supply. I found a relief in travelling in roseless regions, and remember once having enjoyed a day or two of entire relief on Cape Cod, to suffer with renewed severity on my landing at Boston. I was affected temporarily by roses out of season. I remember once in mid-winter, in calling on a sick parishioner, being seized with a violent paroxysm on the entrance into the room of the fianc'e of the patient. My condition was such as to lead to the inquiry how long I had had so severe a cold. My reply was ' Not five minutes; but I should think, did I not see to the contrary, that I was in a room full of roses.'