The Common Cold.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 9 June 1906, Page 5

The Common Cold.

There is no doubt, according to the London Hospital, that the ordinary nasal catarrh is a specific infectious disease. What we observe among domestic animals affords ample evidence of this. It is a familiar fact that a horse that has been wintered out, on being brought into a stable with others, is most likely to develop a cold. The coachman will say it is because the unaccustomed warmth of the stable makes him “nesh.” However, disinfection of the stable liefore bringing animals from grass is a true preventive of the symptoms of catarrh. What occurs among domestic animals we observe, too, among ourselves. Some source of infection must be present before it is possible to catch a cold. There are places where colds are unknown. The universal experience of Arctic and Antarctic explorers is that so long as the members of the expedition are in the polar regions they remain free from colds, but on return to the mainland or to settlements inhabited by those who are in frequent communication with the mainland, they nearly always at once suffer severe colds. The same is said to be true of the men in the observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis, though they live in clouds. Colds they never take, because there are no colds to catch, until the moment they descend to inhabited regions; then they catch severe ones directly. For over two centuries the classical St. Hilda cold has not ceased to interest learned men. On this remote and rocky island of the Western Hebrides, where some 100 inhabitants dwell, eolds are unknown except after the arrival of a ship from the mainland, when all the inhabitants are seized with colds, even to the babe at the breast. Afterward they seem to become to some extent immune, for many escape until the following year. The inhabitants affirm that those colds which are brought by boats from the large ports, Glasgow and Liverpool, are more severe than those brought from the Hebrides.