FT242

There may not, as yet, be a new fortean science of cryptomedicine, but I haven’t been labouring away, secretly at night, in my laboratory for nothing! When I last wrote about the “lost” disease of chlorosis, I had begun to doubt myself, inclining to the view that it could have been illusory, a mere trick of the light [FT222:54–55]. Further research, however, has convinced me that it was a genuine and historically important disease. Chlorosis is or was defined as “a condition characterised by a yellowish-green colour… a form of anæmia affecting especially young girls at puberty. There is a yellowish-green colour to the skin.”


The condition was first described by Johann Lange in 1520 and called by him morbus virgineus or pallor of virgins.