Science v. the Cold

If any man should know anything about the common cold, that man is Dr. Christopher Howard Andrewes. For the-past three years, 1,500 volunteers, furnished with free board, lodging and viruses, have spent ten-day periods under his observation at Harvard Hospital on England's Salisbury Plain. Last week, Cold Expert Andrewes told a large audience at Harvard Medical School (which helped finance its English namesake) just how little he has learned.

Virus-laden washings from the nasal secretions of cold sufferers have been dropped into the noses of hundreds of British volunteers. But even with massive doses, only 55% of the willing guinea pigs got colds.

Said Dr. Andrewes: "We strongly suspect that catching a cold in real life depends on receiving quite a small dose of virus at a time when one's defenses are momentarily off their guard--looking the other way." What the defenses are, exactly, Dr. Andrewes has no idea.

To test the old wives' theory that chilling and wet feet bring on colds, Andrewes persuaded some of his volunteers to soak themselves in hot baths, then stand around in a drafty passage for half an hour undried, wearing bathing suits. Then they put on wet socks. In the first test, the chilled volunteers caught the cold virus more readily than those who were kept snug and warm. But, said Dr. Andrewes, "we were foolish enough to repeat this experiment--with a contrary result." The only positive finding: chilling alone produces no colds.

Dr. Andrewes concludes that "almost everyone has his own foolproof technique for preventing or curing colds, yet colds are as numerous and as troublesome as ever . . . Even the most eminent men of science almost invariably lose all sense of critical judgment where their own colds are concerned."

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