Popular American actress Zooey Deschanel and Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US president Bill Clinton, suffer from the same disease, and both are outspoken about it. They have coeliac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which ingesting gluten – a protein naturally found in some grains – leads to damage in the small intestine. We can thank the second-century Greek doctor and writer Aretaeus of Cappadocia, considered to be second only to the father of medicine himself, Hippocrates, for its name.
Aretaeus described the earliest account of a clinical presentation of the disease, which he called “koiliakos” after the Greek word (for abdomen). He wrote: “If the stomach be irretentive of the food and if it pass through undigested and crude, and nothing ascends into the body, we call such persons coeliacs.” In 2008, an archaeological dig in Italy unearthed a young woman from the first century AD.
Her skeleton, which bore the signs of a failure to thrive in life, was analysed and showed the presence of a gene sequence associated with a high risk of coeliac disease as well as damage typically associated with coeliac disease. Researchers concluded that her condition coincided with exposure to wheat cultivation, as communities began to cultivate crops and not just rely on hunting and gathering for food. Gluten is found in many grains, including wheat, barley, rye and triticale – a hybrid of wheat and rye – and sometimes oats because of contamination.
Those who suffer,.