Medical hypothesis and medical practice: autointoxication and multiple chemical sensitivities

Searching for simple explanations for ill health is as normal as human nature itself. In every era people have suffered varieties of symptoms not readily explained by "known" diseases of the day. To provide explanations and treatment approaches, individuals with symptom complexes were frequently provided a unifying disease label. At the turn of the 20th century, that label was autointoxication. Today, it is multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS). Autointoxication, a popular turn-of-the-century phenomenon illustrates that absent common, reproducible, definable, and measurable findings and consistent, objective endpoints, newly named fad disorders have not survived long term. Autointoxication was a disorder very similar in manifestations to MCS. It was, we now know, a pseudodisease, the treatment of which was based upon an unproven hypothesis. If MCS cannot withstand the probing of scientific investigation, it too will disappear as a diagnosis.