"Allergy is a modern malady. A century ago, even the term allergy was unknown, and ailments such as asthma and eczema were considered to be rare and non-fatal conditions that afflicted only the upper classes of Western society. Yet, as Mark Jackson reveals in this ground-breaking book, by the 1990s allergy had exploded into a set of diseases of great medical, cultural and political significance." "In Allergy, Jackson traces how allergy became the archetypal 'disease of civilization', generating global political concerns about the relationship between health and the environment and stimulating anxieties about the detrimental effects of modern living."--Jacket.