[ffusco]

"There's an alternate theory that allergies are the result of our environment being too clean."

Interesting. I remember reading that farmers have more resistance to germs because they have built up a tolerance, in fact didn't Dr. Jennerf observe that milk maids had some immunity to small pox and used this to develop the vaccine (from the latin Vacca for cow) which was a weakened vaccinia virus?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Actually, Jenner based his work on Turkish practices. Of course, the resistance to smallpox is different from allergies.