Dr Allinson's diagnosis was correct

Published on Wednesday 2 January 2008 20:00

BACK in 1893 the world was changing. New Zealand became the first country to give women the vote, Gandhi was starting his first civil disobedience campaign and Dundee Football Club was formed. But this was still the high tide of the Victorian era, when women wore corsets and doctors told men to smoke every day to clear their lungs. Revolutionaries and anarchists were frowned upon, especial in medical circles.

So it is no surprise that a certain Dr Thomas Allinson, who had been trained in Edinburgh, fell foul of the General Medical Council for publishing a pamphlet in 1893 claiming such outrageous things as the fact that smoking was bad for you, that ladies should get rid of their corsets, that taking opium (as Sherlock Holmes did routinely) was dangerous and that eating vegetables was healthy. Not surprisingly, wicked Dr Allinson was duly ejected from the GMC. What had they been teaching him in Edinburgh?

The good doctor's health manual has just been republished, but in 2008 its message is rather unexceptional, even a trifle pass. On the other hand, were he to return and tell us we were frying our brains using mobile phones, destroying our digestive systems with expensive "detox" recipes and wearing high heels that are bad for our feet, he might be dismissed as a quack once again. Some things never change.