Curing a Cold.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 41, 29 May 1917, Page 2

Curing a Cold.

By ASHLEY STERNE

’Snawful cold I had. I think I must have caught it one day in the City. I entered a Mecca and sat too near some men playing draughts , or the coffee I drank may have been damp—l can’t say. Anyway, 'snawful cold I had, and though I tried to give it to several people I didn t love, I couldn’t get rid of it. When 1 went out of doors strong men rushed away and hid. Nursemaids heroically carried toothless children to places of safety. Policemen diverted the traffic up side streets. Dogs fled panic-stricken. Even my nose ran. Then I met Gerkin. He said, ‘‘Why dot try sub abbodiated quideed for your code ? It’s cured bide.’’ So of! I went to the drugster’s and bought some, took it home, and had it with my lunch. As a beverage, I decided I preferred Condy and soda , as a liqueur, cod-liver oil. It wasn’t success. The truth is I did not take it in time. The whole secret of the successful ammoniated quinine drinker is to take it at ihe critical moment. But that’s no use to me. I never recognise the critical moment when it ticks. One moment I am full of health, vigour, vim, lux, brasso, and so forth, strolling down the Strand chewing the fragrant banana. The next, my temperature rises all of a sudden and knocks my hat off. My beautiful eyes become suffused with tears ; my nose turns red ; my ears flap ; I sneeze and sneeze until the passers-by mistake me for a particularly aggressive type of sodawater syphon. Of course it’s too late then to imbibe ammoniated quinine, it always will be too late for me, unless I take it every day for breakfast instead of marmalade. As far as I am concerned, ammoniated quinine is a bad egg—only with a more repellent flavour. When I met Gerkin again I told him I was too late with his quinine stunt.

“Then try putting your feet in mustard and hot water,I’’ 1 ’’ he aaid. “It’s cured be.’’

“But,” I remarked, “I thought you’d already cured yourself with quinine.” “I doe,” he observed, sadly ; ‘‘but this was adother wud.” So I went home, burgled the cruet, and immersed my feet in this evil consomme. I raged, I melted, I burned. I grew ruddier than a cherry, and brighter than the berry. All the skin qame off my legs and had to be thrown away. I absorbed so much mustard that I contracted Colman’s ankle, which is something’ like housemaid s knee, only lower down. But my cold remained. It wouldn’t let me out of its sight for an instant. It didn t even close early on Saturdays. We were as inseparable as David and Jonathan, Crosse and Blackwell, Jack and Bvelyn. In quick succession I tried one-night cold-cures, menthol snuff, spirits of nitre, and dear little linseed poultices. But nothing happened. It was like pouring oil on a troubled duck’s back, or shutting the stable-door’ after the steed had been led to water. I only got more miserable day by day, and commenced writing to all the best cemeteries for their tariff. Then at last I remembered homoepathy—the “like-cures-like” theory, you know—and resolved to give it a trial. By every known method of catching cold I would endeavour to acquire an entirely new set of microbes and accomodate them in my already germ-crowded body. Accordingly, I removed all flannel from next my skin ; I put on an unaired shirt, a damp collar, and an open-work tie; I loitered in puddles and made my feet wet ; I went out into the rain, and lingered about in my damp clothes ; I took a Turkish bath, and went straight out of the hottest room and cooled myself with an electric ventilating fan. The result exceeded my most sanguine hopes. I caught more microbes than I could use : hay fever, mumps, ingrowing finger-nails, rinderpest, glanders, rickets, writer’s cramp, painter s colic, clergyman's sore throat, tennis elbow, and about forty more that I didn’t even know by sight. True, it took about three months before the cause of these Allies prevailed , but I cured my cold, and to-day I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am the only person that has ever discovered an antidote for this most popular of all complaints.