Beliefs On Common Cold Threatened

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28491, 22 January 1958, Page 8

Beliefs On Common Cold Threatened

Several common beliefs about catching cold are threatened by findings reported in a leading article in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal. Among these are beliefs concerning the removal of tonsils, the effect of tobacco smoking and the. conviction that chilling can bring on a cold. Commenting on a report from Chicago on the inoculations of more than 1000 young adults with filtrates of secretions from patients with common colds, the article says: “The finding that previous tonsillectomy did not influence susceptibility to experimental infection is in line with the observations of natural infections by other workers.’’ The Chicago report was by H. F. Dowling and colleagues. “Tonsillectomy may appear to benefit an individual simply because after the operation he is older than before, and for this reason alone liable to catch fewer colds,” says the journal. “Although every-day experience apparently supports the firmlyheld popular conviction that chilling can bring on a cold, subjective assessment of this may be swayed by heightened awareness of cold during the chilly, approaching stages of the disease. It has been common experience in several wars that soldiers could endure remarkable conditions of wet and cold without catching coldg.”

Describing the experiments and the results, the journal says: “After inoculation, volunteers spent from two to four hours in a controlled environment, either comfortable or at one of two levels of chilling. The subjects were then dismissed, reporting back on the second, third, fourth and sixth days thereafter for examinations by clinicians who did not know which experimental groups their subjects were in. “Significantly more colds were induced in persons with a history of allergy (45 per cent., compared with 31 per cent, in those with no allergic history). Neither smoking nor the presence of tonsils and adenoids had a detectable influence on .susceptibility. “Among women, of 13* chilled and infected in the middle third of the menstrual cycle, 10 developed colds—that is 77 per cent. This figure was significantly more than the 28 and 30 per cent, developing colds after similar treatment in the first or last third of the cycle,” says the journal.

Injured Boy Improving.—The condition of Peter Lawrence, the 11-year-old boy who was mauled by bears through the bars of a circus cage at Napier on Sunday, was satisfactory yesterday. Napier Hospital authorities said he was no longer suffering from shock.— (P.A.)