Amelia Nathan Hill

Amelia Nathan Hill, who set up Action Against Allergy, almost certainly suffered from a psychiatric disorder, writes Caroline Richmond [further to the obituary by Roland Hill, 2 October].

After reading Richard Mackarness's 1976 book Not All in the Mind, which argued that many common neurotic symptoms were caused by unsuspected allergies, she set up her organisation. This conveyed the message to millions that symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, palpitations, unexplained muscle weakness, stomach cramps, inability to cope, etc are caused by allergy. They are, alas, the classic symptoms of anxiety and depression, and familiar to most of us.

Thanks to Mackarness and Hill, thousands of people suffering from the physical effects of neurosis decided that they had allergies to food or the environment. In extreme cases this led patients to decide that they were "totally allergic to the 20th century" and to go at huge expense and live in hermetically sealed bubbles in Dallas. For some reason they never lived quietly in unspoiled rural areas. A phalanx of dodgy doctors, ready to humour them for a suitable fee, sprang up around them.

Research papers then appeared on pseudo food allergy, an editorial in the British Medical Journal took up the subject, and a report by the Royal College of Physicians was published to allay public misconceptions.

In the early 1980s, when there was also a panic about food additives, I wrote an article in New Scientist arguing that most of the case against additives was based on fallacies. This met with a barrage of protest, much of it vicious, that I found most upsetting. To cheer myself up, and because I like wearing cheerful colours, I invented an allergy against bright clothes (published in the BMJ at Christmas 1984). I sent the spoof to Amelia Nathan Hill, who fell for it hook, line and sinker, and put it in her newsletter. I subsequently got letters from people moved to write to me about their bright-clothes allergy. When told it had been a spoof, Mrs Hill responded by saying that the allergy really did exist, and she was grateful to me for drawing her attention to it.

She and I once took part in a discussion programme on food allergy at Granada Television. She had to be accommodated in a separate green room, as she warned the programme-makers in advance that she would be allergic to people who did not share her views. Like many people who suffered from nervous fatigue, she was indefatigable. (And, unlike many who felt they suffered from environmental allergy, she was always kind, polite and pleasant.) I still do think, though, that it was a pity she spent so much of her life in this way, when her symptoms, had she recognised them for what they were, could have been easily treated.