THE COMMON COLD


Equally obvious influences are checked up to the other members of our solar system, in scientific observation, not so open to the lay mind or to the child of Nature, yet noticeable even to them. They notice, too, that they come into the world without volition and similarly pass out of it, and rightly reason that it is an ambiguous law that determines both ends and relinquishes its vital function interim.


Prompted by an article in the New York Times, June 12, 1926, in the thrilling headlines, The Common Cold in for a Battle.

Joint attack of many sciences, to banish the most harmful of diseases, suggested by President of the chemical Foundation, to bring together physicians, pharmacologists, chemists, bacteriologists and pathologists, in coordinated study of the Common Cold, and formulation of its remedy. Seven thousand hospitals, 400 universities, will participate, becoming Pasteur Institutes to study the cold, using their laboratories to supplement each other.

It is thought the resources of the whole domain of fundamental sciences are needed in the achievement, as they all overlap, and the cure of disease is no longer the work of physicians alone, and the common cold demands the cooperation of all related sciences, besides publicists, employers and parents.

They assert that having conquered smallpox, scarlet fever, Tb., yellow fever, hookworm, diphtheria, typhoid and diabetes, the common cold overshadows them all in economic waste and weakening of the human race. Expectant mothers transmit its influence to the child and barren women find other ways. The major expense of hospitals is incurred in combating the common cold.

Eighty per cent of a physicians practice deals with ailments derived from the common cold. The greater part of the countrys 500,000,000 dollars annual drug bill is for cold remedies. Thirty years ago there were 2700 preparations on the druggists lists, now 45,000 and most of them advocated for colds, indicates that many of them are not remedies at all; nor any of them, in the light of the above plea?.

According to figures, the ravages of the common cold are unimaginable, even to the most experienced sufferers. Every man, woman and child loses several days productiveness each year. It imperils and postpones surgery; 90 percent of child mortality is due to common cold; (if nothing is said about the treatment).

Great industries are impeded and put to enormous expense for medical departments, health workers and safety directors to combat colds and their effects.

Much has been done to ascertain the nature of the disease; bacteriologists have devoted years to laboratory investigation; the medical profession made exhaustive study of respiratory diseases during the war; (very exhaustive, about 50 percent mortality); the U.S. public Health Service, local health departments, insurance companies, contributed statistical aspects of the problem, and the cause is still a mystery.

Despite all efforts to determine the cause of the common cold, it remains unknown. At various times, various bacteria have been considered the cause, but not distinctive organism has been convicted. Others think colds are due to chilling, wet feet, wet clothing, exposures, drafts, etc., but Eskimos are cited as not subject to cough or colds by exposure but have been ill after visiting a ship. They did have the “flu in 1918, however, in the entire absence of any ship, or other communication.

“Colds are most common in the temperate zone. Eighty-five per cent of people have more than one cold a year.” Dr. Dochez, doing special research work on this subject says the cold itself is of slight importance; its harm being in disposing the patient to measles, typhoid, scarlatina, and pneumonia. He says chemistry can help by inventing a local antiseptic, to shorten the life of the bacteria; although as said above, the cold cannot be traced to a germ, though bacteria may be traced to colds? The American Medical Research Society say that they have demonstrated that the cause of colds can operate through two feet of solid masonry, hence bacteria must be secondary, if considered at all. The U.S. Government confirmed that finding.

Why this bewilderment about the common cold, sending a despairing S.O.S. to the limits of materialism, which cannot shed a ray of light on the source of Nature of life or health, in whose inhibitions must inhere the primaries of health and disease? And what is meant by COMMON cold, varying in its manifestation with every season, locality, occupation and individual, especially the latter? Is it not apparent that such a variable disorder can have no invariable cause or remedy?

Can they tell us why, in one person, a cold is distinctively right- sided, and in another left-sided, and that proven remedies have a similar pathogenesis; and why no curative remedy can straddle such a distinction? Can they tell why, among these common colds, one patient will have a scalding coryza and bland lachrymation, and hover over the heat with extra wraps, and cringe form cold air, and another will have bland coryza and smarting eyes, and is relieved in cold air, and that it is impossible to comply with both needs with the same remedy?.

Can they tell us why a cold so virulent as to reduce the patient in a few hours to a blear-eyed besotted look and feeling, dull, apathetic, even delirious state, too sick to sit up, too sore to lie down, head aching and aching all over, pillow feels like a rock and the bed like a plank, throat dark red, sick and tending to rapid dissolution; and the indicated remedy will restore order in this patient as rapidly as he went down, and yet bring no response in a mild cold, moderate coryza, painless hoarseness or complete aphonia, racking cough day and night, patient worse in cold damp, weather any lying down?.

And can they tell us why these varied but common colds, treated by a common remedy, are followed by the deplorable sequences and chronic disorders, economic waste and increasing menace so frankly admitted and earnestly protested, and so naturally charged to the ailment instead of its suppression?.

Can they tell us how such a patient comes in saying, “I have had a cough ever since I had a cold seven years ago, constant and violent all winter, quiet all summer, and has resisted every known treatment, medical or mechanical, scientific or domestic. I dread to ride in a street car, lest a coughing spell cause me to leave a steaming puddle on the car seat, or walk far in the street, lest I leave a trail like a sprinkler on the sidewalk,” and that vanished with the second dose of Natrum mur. 200 , though he had eaten salt every day of its seven-year duration?.

But give em another try. A twelve-year-old girl brought to me in Minneapolis had coughed all night for eight years, and the family was in despair because there was no rest for any of them, and were told there never would be because of irreparable structural change. There was a nasal deformity contracting the right side of the nose and face and affecting speech.

Whether its incidence was cold or whooping cough at the age of four I cannot now recall, but for eight years she had sat up in bed every night to modify the eight years she had sat up in bed every night to modify the cough, symptomatic of several remedies, but the peculiar one was a bluish transparency of the skin of the face and forehead. The first dose of Hyos. 1000 ended the eight-year cough; a second relaxed the spastic nose, and restored normal speech.

A year or two later she was treated for an extreme case of measles, emphasizing the previous tendency to extreme disorder and hinting of the liberation of some infantile suppression.

In passing it may be added for the assurance of anyone who feels doubtful of anything but freshly medicated remedies that the Hyoscyamus was an heirloom from some associates discard, yellow with age.

But this is not a clinical recital, but an inquiry into cause and remediation of common colds. It intimates, however, that cause does not determine cure, however desirable it may sometimes be to know. Friend Palmer used sometimes to say of my citations that he had done the same things with a half glass of water, stirred long and hard. All right; if water is enough, the use of arbitrary chemical power to override disease action convicts one of an assault on the vital force, increasing disorder and courting death, as set fort in the S.O.S. above. It might he more instructive and less destructive to use water every time we in doubt of the indicated remedy, or unable to get the indications, and see how much Nature would lower the death and raise our courage.

The statistician for an insurance company, who was invited to our local meeting, presented a table of averages indisputably correct, but, as he explained, in no way intended to solve medical problems. His tables show accurately that men Do die, not how they die, whether by act of God, self or the doctor; and because finite comes of the Infinite, no material science will penetrate the mystery of life, and only the superficial aspects of physiology or psychology, whose disturbed equilibrium is soon followed by tissue changes; yet in honest endeavor and diligent search, will materialistic men swallow chunks of sophistry, but gas or choke on a little pearl of wisdom; and pearls are of humble birth.

With the shifting and passing of sophistries, fads and fallacies, dignified as medical discoveries, there sparkles that pearl of Josh Billings: “It is a whole lot better for a man to be ignorant than to know a lot of things that aint so.” Or Lincolns: “You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him drink.” The horse is true to Nature, but suggest to man that he chill his stomach with three glasses of cold water on retiring, and scald it out with three glasses of hot water in the morning, and hes at it, with Bridgets “Dad, Maam, Ill take anything thatll cure me, if it kills me.”

F A Clarke