Interesting to see doctors and scientists claiming that allergies are a modern plague. How do they know?

Surely it is just advances in medical science and the establishment of the NHS that have even made us aware of their existence.

I know this is true because I was the person who invented the dust mite, that horrible bacteria that lives anywhere dusty and is a major cause of asthma, eczema and other allergies.

I say invented, what I actually mean is that tests arranged by my clever Indian doctor enabled scientists to find it for the first time, living on me.

I suppose I was about ten when they poked and prodded me on a special visit to the Beecham laboratories in West London.

Before then us ordinary people just suffered, or died young.

That’s why families were so much bigger in the old days.

My dad’s brother Joe didn’t make it past eight months. I’ve got his death certificate, and the doctors verdict is basically ‘Died from death.’ Great Aunt Nell, hairdresser and family beauty, was one of the last to die from tuberculosis.

I was allergic to lots of things, mainly in mild doses, but the dust was the killer.

I still use a special dust–proof pillow.

A friend suffered from psoriasis, but the only effective treatment turned her orange.

But before the War - the real one, not the military's modern pointless adventures- people just suffered in silence from things neither they nor doctors understood.

Touch of wasting disease, anyone?