Word: porphyria
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Clinic operators provide eye-protecting goggles and take some precautions to see that patrons do not get burned. Customers fill out cards describing their sensitivity to the sun; people with obvious skin problems such as psoriasis or porphyria are supposedly turned away. Booths have timers that turn off the lamps after a set period, typically one to five minutes, though dedicated tanners with hides that can take it may stay up to 15 minutes...
...Victorian stereotype alone does not explain the woman's extraordinary fascination for biographers. Kings and queens are not, as a rule, very interesting people-the house of Hanover, in particular, had a flair of dullness, except when its sons were deranged by porphyria or brandy-and Victoria was one of the few British monarchs to be a wholly singular creature. "She not merely filled the chair. She filled the room," remarked the Duke of Wellington, a man not easily impressed, when he saw her after she had received the news of William IV's death...
George apparently inherited porphyria from Mary Queen of Scots (1542-87), who passed the genetic disorder on to 16 generations of European aristocracy. Her son, James I of England, was affected, as are several living European aristocrats who cooperated in the study but asked that they not be identified. In a simliar fashion, Queen Victoria-whose father, the Duke of Kent, showed signs of porphyria-passed hemophilia on to generations of male European royalty...
Textbook Case. Porphyria was unknown in clinical jargon before the 20th century, and is still not fully understood. It is a group of diseases with many different signs and symptoms. "In some of them the only problem is the undue sensitivity of the skin to sunlight," wrote Professor Abe Goldberg of Glasgow's Western Infirmary in 1966. In others, "the normal life of the patient may be shattered by devastating attacks of abdominal pain, paralysis of limbs, and profound mental upset...
...sign, however, may occur in any variety of porphyria-darkening of the urine, which frequently turns the color of port wine. The discoloration is caused by the presence of porphyrins, purple-red pigments contained in every cell of the human body and responsible for the red color of blood. In porphyria a metabolic defect results in an excess of porphyrins and their byproducts...