Definition Time 45and Hunter, working at Addenbrooks Hospital and the University of
Cambridge showed that foods were able to provoke the symptoms of so-
called irritable bowel syndrome in fourteen out of twenty-one patients.
This was done double-blind, which means that extraneous factors, due
perhaps to the patient knowing what he was being tested with, were ruled
out. Irritable bowel syndrome is typical of many “mysterious” complaints
which have kept conventional doctors puzzled for years. In actual fact,
clinical ecologists have been saying it was food allergy for decades.
An even more historic step was the publication (October 1983) of
the findings of a carefully staged study of migraine in children. Doctors
Egger, Carter, Wilson and Turner and Professor Soothil of the Hospital for
Sick Children and Institute of Child Care, Great Ormond Street, London,
studied eighty-eight youngsters so afflicted. They were able to demonstrate
a clear relationship with food and food additives in no fewer than eighty-two
of those cases! Quite startling evidence, and very satisfying for alternative
allergy physicians, who have had to bear their colleagues’ scorn and
indifference while trying to make it known that food and chemical allergies
are by far the greatest factor in migraines.
Since then the trickle of studies has grown into a torrent. Yet still
doctors are reluctant to accept that what we eat can have profound effects on
our health. A seven-pound infant is entirely the result of nutrients supplied
by the mother; a ten-stone (140 pound) adult is the product of whatever he
or she has swallowed while growing up – yet still they don’t seem to get it!
Arthur Coca’s one-man allergy revolution
Before concluding this brief historical interlude, mention must be made
of one key figure: Arthur F. Coca, MD (1875-1959). He was a very special
physician, who managed to bridge alternative and mainstream medicine.
He gave us the important term atopy, meaning “strange disease.”
Coca also tried to introduce the word ‘idioblapsis,’ which fortunately did not
catch on.
Coca is best remembered for his pulse test technique. But in this
context his most important contribution is in defining the issues. Although
he was well-versed in immunology, indeed he was Professor of Immunology
at Cornell University and founder of the Journal of Immunology, which
he edited for thirty-two years, he clearly saw the standard immunological
mechanisms were not the mechanisms by which most food allergy took
place. Coca christened it “non-reaginic” food allergy (an antibody would be
a reagin). He also noticed that troubles tended to run in families. So his full