COLDS AND ELECTRICITY

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 236, 6 October 1936, Page 10

COLDS AND ELECTRICITY

JT has long beer* a layman's charge the medical profession that the doctors cannot cure a cold. It has certainly proved to bo a difficult problem. Professor Fritz Munk, of the Berlin University, has opened- up investigations along a fresh avenue. fn older days coughs and colds were blamed upon “chills." There appears to have been sufficient truth in this explanation to have carried it through many years find numberless means for the prevention and cure of colds were based upon this idea. Quite apart from tho experience of modern nudist camps, there is a good deal of evidence against the simple acceptance of this explanation. Then came Pasteur’s experiments ot 70 or 80 years ago, whereby he found that “germs"—bacteria and protozoa •—were the causes of various diseases of plants and animals. The activities and the wicked influences of tho germs of colds were then linked up with the conditions of temperature and moisture of the weather, and so we had a .second “explanation" that carried us through for a good many years. Medical investigators tell us that although “germs" cause the trouble in our colds, the first damage is done by something

Fresh Avenue for Cure

more subtle, something that we are unable to see, called a “filterable virus." But we are still not able to prevent or cure colds very readily. Professor Munk argues that we do not know the real causes, and hence cannot outline the proper remedies or preventives. People “catch cold" or “talk a chill" in many cases without noticing it—without any preeeptible feeling of cold. It is known that there are differences of electrical potential between the skin of one part of the body and another. There must be a,,, subtlo streaming of currents between one part and another. Theso electrical conditions liavo been carefully investigated by Munk and his fellow workers. Their existence has been confirmed, and it has been shown also that these currents may. be greatly affected by the processes of sneezing and shivering which are well known accompaniments of an oncoming cold. Professor Munk concludes that in catching cold we have not so much disturbed the apparatus for regulating the heat of the body as that we have undergone a disturbance of tlio electromotive condition of the skin. It is known that each kind of “germ” thrives best at a definite electrical biological standard, and thus the seat of infection must first become electrically favourable.