4 AUGUST 1990, Page 18

If symptoms

persist . . .

HYPOCHONDRIASIS is one of the many forms of self-importance. For hypochondriacs, twinges are martyrdom, vague indispositions harbingers of im- pending death. The problem for doctors, of course, is that even hypochondriacs are mortal, though many of them seem to live an indecently long time; furth- ermore, they are predisposed to sue.

Of all the infinite variety of hypochon- driacal complaints to which, strictly speaking, flesh is not heir, allergy is the one which causes doctors the most trou- ble. I don't mean to deny the existence of allergy as a phenomenon: too Many were the guinea pigs I once despatched in a laboratory by injecting them with tiny doses of a substance to which they had been made allergic. Besides, I have re- cently become sensitised to bivalve mol- luscs, causing one or two embarrassing scenes at dinner parties.

But just as CIA plots are asserted rather more frequently than they occur, so allergy is more common in its mental than its physical forms. It has been used to explain — or explain away — every- thing from laziness to bad temper and unhappiness. Allergy is to the moderns what moral responsibility was to the ancients. Apart from demonstrating the superior sensibility of the sufferer, and serving as an inexhaustible subject of conversation for the fundamentally bored, alleged allergy has one other vital, if suprising, function: it is a weapon in undeclared wars between husbands and wives.

I was once at a dinner party at which a husband, an outdoor type who would wrestle grizzly bears to the ground, was obliged to taste the soup on behalf of his wife to determine whether she was aller- gic to any of its ingredients. This strange procedure continued throughout the meal; and thus a man who might other- wise have enjoyed the regard of the other guests was made to look foolish, while his wife basked in the role of martyr to an oversensitive immune system, a kind of Aids in reverse. Her reputation (she was an artist) soared.

I knew of an even more severe case of allergy, this time in a far off land, completely isolated from what we euphe- mistically call civilisation. A foreign aid worker there was vainly attempting live- stock improvement, and luckily for him his wife was allergic to all the water in the world except that bottled from a single spa in Germany. She even bathed in it.

As may readily be imagined, the purch- ase and transport in large quantities of this nectar to the uttermost part of the earth was not cheap, and ensured that there would be no early retirement for the improver of livestock. Thus was postponed the evil hour when the couple would have to endure each other's com- pany throughout the day. Her allergy was not to water, but to her husband.

There is, of course, no cure for people who are allergic to ubiquitous substances, unless they happen upon it themselves. They then go triumphantly to their doc- tors (who have failed to cure them for 20 years), to announce the name of the miraculous cure which he has ignorantly withheld: lavender water tinged with pink.

As a man with a scientific conscience, I can't stand this type of nonsense: in fact, it brings me out in spots.

Theodore Dalrymple