Jackson - Asthma: the biography

ASTHMA

The Biography

Mark Jackson

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

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Mark Jackson 2009

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First published 2009

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jackson, Mark, 1959

Asthma: the biography/Mark Jackson.

p.; cm.(Biographies of disease)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-19-923795-1 (hardback: alk. paper)

1. AsthmaHistory. I. Title. II. Series: Biographies of disease (Oxford, England)

[DNLM: 1. Asthmahistory. WF 11.1 J13a 2009]

RC591.J315 2009

616.238dc22 2009026412

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

ISBN 978-0-19-923795-1

1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2

For Ciara, Riordan, and Conall

Lamour cest lespace et le temps rendus sensibles au cur.
Marcel Proust, La Prisonnire

Unlike asthma, this book has a relatively straightforward history. Approximately two years ago, Bill and Helen Bynum asked me to contribute a volume on asthma to a new edited series entitled Biographies of Disease, to be published by Oxford University Press. Since it seemed an excellent idea, I agreed, and the book was born. I am deeply grateful to Bill and Helen for their constructive, and astonishingly swift and generous, advice and support throughout the process of preparing the manuscript. I am also indebted to Latha Menon from Oxford University Press for her careful coordination and management of the project.

The research on which the book is based was funded by the Wellcome Trust, and I am grateful both for the Trusts financial support and for the advice and friendship of key figures within the Trust, particularly Mark Walport, Clare Matterson, Tony Woods, and Liz Shaw. Since the chronological and geographical range of the subject extended well beyond my usual terms of historical reference, I am afraid that I relied on the generosity of many colleagues, who shared their work, time, and ideas in order to facilitate my access to the previously hidden depths of ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, histories of medicine. In particular, I would like to thank Guy Attewell, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Siam Bhayro, Roberta Bivins, Jeremy Black, Maarten Bode, Tse Wen Chang, Philip van der Eijk, Alison Finch, Ali Haggett, Rhodri Hayward, Harry Hendrick, Carla Keirns, Ian Gregg, Tak Lee, Vivienne Lo, Gregg Mitman, Glen Needham, Carol Parry, David van Sickle, Matthew Smith, Akihito Suzuki, and John Wilkins. I am also grateful to staff in the inter-library loan section of the University of Exeter Library for obtaining copies of otherwise inaccessible articles and books, and to Asthma UK for allowing me access to the early records of the Asthma Research Council.

I am grateful to the following sources for the illustrations and permission to reproduce them: is a scanning electron micrograph of an American house dust mite reproduced by kind permission of Glen Needham, Acarology Laboratory, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. I have made every effort to contact all copyright holders. If proper acknowledgement has not been made, I ask the copyright holders to contact the publishers.

Of course, my heart belongs to Siobhn, who breathed fresh life into me many years ago and who will always be the fulcrum of my world. The book is dedicated, however, to our three children, Ciara, Riordan, and Conall, who have so beautifully filled our space and time.

Il ny a pas de maladies; il ny a que des malades.

French aphorism

In a brief letter written to his devoted mother in 1900, the French novelist Marcel Proust complained that the previous day he had suffered from an attack of asthma of unbelievable violence and tenacity, which had obliged him to spend all night on his feet in spite of extreme tiredness. Such episodes of acutely debilitating asthma were not unusual for Proust during this period of his life. In another intimate note to his mother, dated 26 August 1901, Proust described how, having travelled to Versailles to visit some distant relatives, he had been seized with a horrifying attack of asthma, so that I didnt know what to do or where to hide myself. A few days later, his misery continued unabated:

Yesterday after I wrote to you I had an attack of asthma and incessant running at the nose, which obliged me to walk all doubled up and light anti-asthma cigarettes at every tobacconists I passed, etc. And whats worse, I havent been able to go to bed till midnight, after endless fumigations, and its three or fours hours after a real summer attack, an unheard of thing for me. Such a thing has never happened outside the usual season for my attacks.

Marcel Proust was born in Paris on 10 July 1871, at a moment of widespread political unrest in France following the disastrous Paris Commune earlier that year. His Roman Catholic father, Dr Adrien Proust (18341903), was a prominent doctor who had chosen to remain in Paris to treat those wounded during street battles between the revolutionary National Guard and the Versailles army. Renowned particularly for his work on cholera and public health, Adrien was one of the founders of the International Office of Hygiene and the co-author of a treatise on neurasthenia, in which he suggested that maternal over-affection might cause nervous diseases. Significantly, Marcel was deeply attached to his Jewish mother, Jeanne (ne Weill), who remained his closest carer and confidante, and to whom he wrote almost daily messages, until her death in 1905.

Marcel Proust suffered his first severe attack of asthma when he was 9 years old, while out walking with his family in the Bois de Boulogne. From that moment, asthma and hay fever, along with many other recurrent complaints such as insomnia, indigestion, back pain, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue, began to plague his life: during early adulthood Proust became a chronic invalid, often confined to his room, and indeed his bed, as he attempted to cope with persistent ill health and maintain his intellectual creativity. Having graduated in law and philosophy in the early 1890s, Proust published his first book