OCR Text |
Show COLDS AND THEIR CAUSES.- The really Important question is. In what does predisposition consist? We talk of a man "catching a cold." But it would be more correct and equally graphic to say that the cold has "caught" the man. For it does catch him unawares, and ofteh when he least anticipates it. But no cold ever caught any man unless he had first prepared the ground for it by a careful process of fertilization. No amount of mere exposure to a low temperature alone will cause a "cold" in a perfectly healthy man, in whom the product of wear and tear of nerve and muscle, with adequate excretion of waste products, on the one side Is evenly even-ly balanced by food supply and exercise exer-cise on the other. Where the equilibrium does not exist such exposure then operates op-erates as a "chill." Now, who are the people who are liable lia-ble to catch cold? Not those whose dietary die-tary is so carefully adjusted to the work they hav to do that there is no opportunity for the accumulation of unused foodstuffs in their tissues; but those who, in the better-fed ranks of society, eat and drink more than they need to meet the dally requirements of their bodily activity, and are thus continually con-tinually storing up in their tissues and excreting organs material which if appropriately ap-propriately used would form valuable ammunition for the development of energy en-ergy either of body or mind, but which when stored beyond a certain point has to be blown off In a "cold" or a "bilious attack," or in a pronounced fit of gout. |