History of Allergy

• History of any subject is always interesting so is of allergy.
• Chinese physicians who used dried scabs of small pox to prevent this dreaded disease by inhalation.
• Hippocrates , the father of modern medicine has made some speculations in allergy
• Lucratius remarked two thousand years ago, “Differences are so great that one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
• Edward Jenner is usually regarded to father of Immunology. He injected material from cowpox to a boy followed by small pox inculcation deliberately
• The word “Allergy” was coined by von Pirquet in 1906 meaning ‘altered reactivity’.
• Intradermal allergy testing was described first by Lewis and Grant in 1926 but Jack Pepys popularized it in 1970 Shivpuri DN. is considered to be father of Indian allergy and immunology.