Paper Palate

Some people base their diets on their favorite foods, on specific ingredients that are central to their culture, or on the number of calories they ingest. But food allergies can be an inconvenient deciding factor of their own for a significant number of people (the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases estimates that one in fifty adult Americans suffer from the condition).

Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady, a new book by Mark Jackson (a professor of the history of medicine in England), offers academic insight into a set of common medical conditions that were not widely recognized until the late nineteenth century and not fully understood until well into the twentieth. Though written for a general audience, this is a dense book, riddled with scientific language and punctuated with foot notes. And those who persevere through each of the seven chapters may be disappointed to find that food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerance are given only cursory attention in what turns out be largely a socioeconomic analysis of the history of hay fever. The author frequently explains that hay fever, asthma, and food and drug allergies have “a common pathology, a common epidemiology, and a common history,” but he pays less attention to the alarming increase in deadly peanut allergies in today’s children than he does to the life and death (an odd joint suicide with his wife) of the Austrian pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet who originated the term “allergy” in 1906.

After galloping through the pollen-filled pages of Allergy, some readers may find themselves hungry for more detailed information on the diagnosis, treatment, and management of food allergies. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network in the US, the British Institute for Allergy and Environmental Therapy in the UK, and the Allergy Unit at the Royal Price Albert Hospital in Australia are all good places to start.