Conducted by ELIZABETH SLOAN CHESSER, M.B. This important section of Every Woman's Encyclopedia is conducted by this prominent lady doctor, who will give sound medical advice with regard to all ailments from childhood to old age.* When completed this section will form a complete reference library, in which will be found the best treatment for every human ill. Such subjects as the following will be fully dealt with : Home Nursing Infants' Diseases Adtil/s' Diseases Homely Cures Consumption Health Hints Hospitals Health Resorts First Aid Common Medical Blunders The Medicine Chest Simple Remedies^ etc., etc. COLBS AND CATARRHS A Cold in the Head is Not the Result of Chill : it is an Infectious Ailment- The Prevention and Cure of Catarrh -Causes of Colds — IV the dark ages, before the science of bacteriology was a subject of popular interest, there was a general idea that cold in the head was the result of a chill, and the people with a
- enius for catching cold spent their lives in a
vain effort to avoid the draughts and damp which are inevitably associated with our climate. At last, however, we are becoming educated up to the standard of realising that cold in the head is an infectious ailment which has very little to do with cold weather. Chill may be a cause of " cold," but only in the same way that fatigue, worry, and indigestion are causes. Chill will lower the vitality and make anyone more susceptible — that is all. If we could prevent the microbes of cold in the head from entering oijr respiratory passage, from making their way into the nose or into the mouth, we should never " catch cold." Unfortunately, however, microbes are plenti- ful. We meet them every day, every hour of the day. Indeed, we cannot escape from them unless we are prepared to sit in airtight boxes nnd to die of asphyxia. Microbes, moreover, h.^te intense heat or cold, but neither the oven nor the refrigerator are abodes likely to appeal to any one of us. {"■or an infectious disease, such as a cold, to develop, however, the seed, or microbe, must find " a suitable soil." We breathe into our lungs every day of our lives the deadliest of microbes, but they do not kill us ; on the contrary, our tissues destroy and annihilate them. In fact, our " soil " is resistant ; our tissues are suffi- ciently healthy to destroy the microbes of disease, and do not permit them to destroy us. But supposing that our vitality is depressed by chill or overwork, supposing we are suffering from dyspepsia or disappointed love, then the microbes have their opportunity. Our depressed tissues are conquered. The soil is receptive, and the two or three microbes which enter our nasal passages or our mouths fasten upon the mem- branes of our respiratory passage, and flourish like the proverbial green bay-tree, until they form there whole colonies of the microbes of cold in the head. We sneeze and cough in a vain effort to get rid of them. We take quinine in the attempt to poison them, but with very little result. We are in the grip of " cold," and in nine cases out of ten it runs its course. Exposure to cold will nevet in itself cause catarrh of the air-passage. Chill in the pure fresh air has nothing to do with it. Draughts do not cause cold, but rather prevent it, because microbes flee before fresh air. In the same way, damp will not in itself cause cold in the head. You may get wet, just as you may sit in a draught, and these proceedings will do no more than predispose you to cold, in that they lower your vitality. The open-air treatment of consumption compels patients with diseased lungs to sit in draughts, and even in some cases to walk barefoot in the snow, and the only effect is improvement of their general health. How Colds are Caught How does the ordinary person- catch cold ? First, because he is afraid of draughts, and thus he will invite cold by avoiding healthy currents of pure air. He poisons his tissues by living in stuffy rooms, by sleeping in bedrooms where no draught can enter, by ignoring the crying neces- sity for improved ventilation in our homes, our churches, our theatres, and concert-halls. At this season of the year every gathering of people contains two or three who are suffering from nasal catarrh, and yet only on a very few occasions is the amount of pure air per head sufficient for the people present in the assembly. After, perhaps, half an hour everybody present is breathing into the lungs air which is deficient in oxygen, which contains an excess of carbonic acid gas, and which is thickly populated with microbes expired by persons suflering from what is commonly called' " cold in the head."
