A PINCH OF SNUFF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21258, 12 February 1931, Page 18

A PINCH OF SNUFF.

TO PREVENT COLDS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 2. Doubtless, purveyors of snuff will be grateful for the correspondence that has appeared in The Times on a practice that seems to have largely gone out of fashion. “ The Common Cold >} was the title of an article in The Times on December 27. Mr G. Buckston Browne, F.R.C.S., followed this up with a letter in which he advocated “a pinch of snuff.” “ What we want,” he wrote, “ is a prophylactic or preventive, at . once handy and agreeable, and that I believe we have in a pinch of snuff. After years of observation I am satisfied that the danger ot infection, and even of a chill, is reduced to its minimum if, on winter nights, when retiring, we take snuff freely, clear the nose well, and bathe the face in warm water. If this be not done every night, it should certainly be done after sitting in any crowded assembly or carriage. The nasal circulation is stimulated, congestion relieved, mucous flows freely, and poisonous matter is washed away. Incidentally, the mucous membranes, of the eye and inner ear participate in the mucous flow, and these organs are benefited.” FOR HAY FEVER, Sir James MacLeod, who was previously Consul-general of Tunis, confirms and supplements this statement. “ Many years ago, at Fez, he says, a medical friend of mine, Dr Greig, arrived suffering, for the previous three months, with hay fever, and had ‘ tried everything he knew’ to get rid of it. At my suggestion, although with some incredulity, he took a big pinch of Mo'orish snufl before each expected recurrence of the fever. Within 36 hours his trouble disappeared. Subsequently, he wrote to me from New Zealand that he had since prescribed snuff in such cases to his patients and the results had been most satisfactory. His theory was that sneezing was Nature’s effort to drive out the germs of the fever, and that the extra sneezing induced by the snuff ensured this being done promptly, thoroughly, and permanently. TICKLING WITH A FEATHER. Mr W. Douglas Reid, of Balcombe, Sussex, makes another suggestion. He states that he is in his eightieth year and almost entirely free from colds. “My good fortune,” he says, is undoubtedly attributable to a habit contracted from the South Sea Islanders 60 years ago. It was both preventive and cure simple, and, I think, general* When a Kanaka felt a cold coming on he got one of his friends to tickle his nose with perhaps a feather or a straw, and he was kept sneezing violently until he could no longer stand the tickling process. Then he was cured, or l on the way and I have stood the test when necessary on my. own nose, with the desired result. My friends are never tired of predicting my death of cold' because I do not mind the weather. But it seems likely they will need some other means of accomplishing that mournful event.”