Saturday, June 11th, 2011

brightknightie: Nick as US Civil War doctor (Medicine)
In the present day, FK has Nick disguise his inability to tolerate sunlight behind a generic claim of "allergies."  While of course allergies and skin conditions have always been around, I wondered, when was the idea of allergies invented?  What did past generations call allergies?  When could Nick have begun using allergies as an excuse, and what excuses might he have used before that point?  (I once wrote a story in which he blamed mustard gas exposure for his skin's sensitivity. There must be infinite such possibilities.)

Several brief histories of allergies turn up in any search engine (a few obviously heavily plagiarized, unfortunately), but the most extensive and informative seems to be a corporate newsletter's three-part summary of the book Ancestors of Allergy (1994), edited by Estelle Simons: Part 1 (Ancient World), Part 2 (Middle Ages and Renaissance), Part 3 (Modern).  On the skin condition side, the available authority seems to be the Historical Atlas of Dermatology and Dermatologists (2002) by John Crissey, Lawrence Parish and Karl Holubar.

It turns out that the word "allergy" was coined in 1906, and "analphylaxis" in 1902.  How long those words took to enter the common vocabulary and understanding, I don't know, but I would guess that they remained medical/academic specialty concepts for some years.

ExpandMore History )

At this time, I conclude that allergies are not a highly useful cover for Nick's condition before the latter half of the twentieth century, but that the humoral understanding of skin conditions may yield some plausible excuses.  More research!

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