You'll Catch Your Death!

U.S. medicine (as represented by the American Laryngological Association) last week caught up with grandma. After years of trying to change the subject, the scientists finally broke down and admitted that colds are caused by a draft. Their language, however, was somewhat different from grandma's. Said Dr. Irwin Gabriel Spiesman of Maywood, Ill., making a clean breast of it to 99 other experts in Atlantic City: "Rapid cooling of most cutaneous surfaces produces a reflex vasoconstriction [tightening of blood vessels] and ischemia [lack of blood] leading to lowered mucous membrane temperature of the upper respiratory tract."

The specialists made it clear that medicine only partly agrees with grandma: doctors still believe that colds are carried --no matter which way the wind blows--by a virus. Drafts, as well as heavy drinking, emotional upsets, constipation, weaken the body's resistance, make it easy for the cold virus to enter.

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