COMMON GOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 8 (Supplement)

COMMON GOLD.

A GREAT CRUSADE MOST WASTEFUTi SICKNESS. (By A. R. G. DOUGLAS.) (Anglo-American News Service—Copyright.) Two good, hard, common colds are the average annual lot of everyone. They are, indeed, so common that most people regard colds as little more than an uncomfortable nuisance. Yet these "minor respiratory diseases," through working days lost to industry, cause a greater economic loss than any other single form of sickness. Diseases of the game family group, including influenza and certain of the pneumonias, which in their early stages are hardly distinguishable from common colds, cause, it is said, more deaths than any other infectious

disease. It is little wonder, then that Johns Hopkine University, in the United States, is marshalling the many units of its great medical group for a five-year co-operation research aimed at finding the cause and cure of common colds. Surveys of the United States Public Health Service have shown that colds yearly disable four in every ten men and seven in every ten women —a loss to industry of 1.4 days a year for each man on the pay-roll and 2.1 per annum for every female employee.

Little Known of Cause or Cure. Yet, despite the fact that every doctor sees more of colds than of any other disease, despite the tyrannical tribute it exacts from industry and the inconvenience and danger to which it exposes everyone, little or nothing is known of the cause of common colds. Recently a representative of the Chemical Foundation was almost prevented by a hard cold from going to Johns Hopkins to consult about the research. He went to eee the scientist who will be one of the leaders in the attack on common colds, ■who himself was sick in bed with a cold the last time the foundation's representative called to consult him.

The plurality of the term "common colds" is remarkable. There are many fancy names for the same thing or things—rhinitis, tonsilitis, pharyngitis, sinusitis, laryngitis, tracheitis, coryza, influenza, and a host of others. They refer most often to the place in a person's anatomy where he feels worst ■when he has a "cold," rather than to the nature of a cold. A division of the research will deal with the problem of how colds are spread from one person to another. Large groups of entire families and the staffs of industrial corporations will be studied. There are three combinations of symptoms met commonly among thoso who compiain of colds.

Symptoms. The first of these is the type most frequently met. The patient declares that he is unaccountably experiencing a feeling of chilliness. Then vague feelings of ill-health set in—slight fever, sneezing, copious watering of the nose, with possibly some soreness irLSwallowing and a little hoarseness. This continues for a few days, after which either these symptoms disappear and the patient gets well, or the "cold" changes for something more serious. Several studies have been made of this type of cold to determine whether a diseaseproducing organism is responsible. Scientists are pretty well agreed, however, that in the first type, when the nose runs the most, the eyes smart most painfully, and the patient feels most miserable, no organism can be isolated and held to account.

Another type of cold is one which the patient more or less carries around with himself. The cavities in the bony formation of the face are filled with mucous membrane folds called sinuses. In the course of a "cold" or some similar difficulty a sinus may become infected. The "cold" may be cured, and everything incidental to the attack may seem a closed issue, when suddenly the infection in the sinus makes itself recognised in the fullness of its bloom, and the patient once more is incapacitated. This type is described by physicians as "a lighting up of an old sinusitis." It is known that in certain types of colde a certain number of diseasecausing germs, like those present in influenza and pneumonia, suddenly begin to increase very rapidly. Efforts to convict them of primary blame for a cold, however, have been unavailing. Some progress has also been made toward showing that some colds may be due to a filterable virus, a, sub-micro-scopic and infinitely small disease causer. Small pox is known to be due to one type of infinitesimal virus, and cancer is euspected of being caused by another. Any infectious disease where a specific germ has not been found runs a chance of being blamed on one that is too small to be isolated.

Millions Now Spent on Remedies. For the alleviation of a .cold there are treatments, but no cv.:e. There are said to be about 45,000 cold-curing drugs on the market. The lion's share of the American nation's 500,000,000 dollar drug] bill is spent for cold remedies. Of thisj three-fifths is for patent medicines alone, I most of which are sold as cold remedies. In general it seems that one cold does not contribute to immunity against another cold. The body appears to get the knack of fighting colds more effectively, and their number is likely to decrease up to the age of 35. Then bodily resistance appears to slacken for, a few years, and afterwards to reassert itself. The study of diseases of animals has been a fruitful field for those who sought to cure somewhat similar ailments of mankind. The dreaded "distemper," which causes alarm to the owners of pet dogs and cats, is one of the animal diseases which will come under the scrutiny of the searchers for the cause of common colds. Another is "snuffles," which brings misery to rabbits and babies. The finding of the exact cause and a dependable cure for any of the cold group may well lead to the conquest of all. False Colds. The field, however, has already been narrowed by the elimination of the "protein poisonings" from the common cold group. These poisonings, including hay fever, are treated with a preventive serum made from the pollen of the offending flower. Coupled with any other disease it increases the difficulty of recovery. There is an old saying: "Treat a cold and you can get rid of it in two -weeks; let it alone and it will la££ 14 days."