Garlic Necklaces, the Illiad, Viitamin C and Other Ingenious Non-Cures for the Common Cold

by Paul DesOrmeaux

Reprinted from the October-December, 2006 BASIS

The common cold, better known as acute nasopharyngitis, is no fun…for you or me, that is. For the cold virus, it’s a chance to go forth and multiply. Sure, a cold doesn’t rank up there with gallstones or an IRS audit, but in general, it’s a 5- to 10-day nuisance that results in an annual workplace loss of around twice Bill Gates’ net worth.

It’s no wonder we’ve been so desperate for a cure as far back as when humans first huddled together in an enclosed area. History offers oodles of evidence that humans will try anything short of common sense to defeat this elusive evildoer. And we’re not excluding recent history, by which I mean the present.

When it comes to winning the battle against the common cold, regrettably we aren’t necessarily any more successful than our clueless ancestors, except we don’t kill the cold victim while trying to cure her. Here we are basking in the video-phone glow of 21st century, yet the last time I checked under an electron microscope, the cold viruses were still whooping it up. However, don’t despair fellow cold sufferers. Although there aren’t any cures for the common cold, there’s never been a shortage of claims for cures.

Are we any smarter than our forefathers when it comes to understanding and curing the common cold? Well, let’s hop into Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine and see if the most expensive educational system in the world has made us smarter than our predecessors.

Colds have probably been around pre-Flintstones. However, our earliest record of suffering the sniffles comes from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is a scribbly sort of writing and drawing we currently sell as modern art. Historians smarter than I - maybe - have analyzed and interpreted some of these sketches and symbols. One of these “pictures” apparently shows someone coughing, while mucous, scientifically known as snot, is dripping from a symbol that suggests a nose.

More interestingly, though, are papyri, or medical writings. These “pages” contain the first known scientific treatments. According to such documents, these remedies are “directed against resh which makes ill the seven apertures of the head.” Well, if that isn’t descriptive of a cold, I don’t know my Egyptian writing. The suggested cure included the reciting of an incantation along with “administration of milk of one who has borne a male child and fragrant gum.”

Of course, much of this information relies on interpretation and translation by unidentified sources. For all we know, although we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, the text may have been referring to the results of eating hot chicken wings. It wasn’t until the 5th century B.C. that an actual description of a cold was finally written down by Hippocrates - the Father of Medicine - in plain English…not technically speaking, of course, since he was Greek. The point is that Greek is easier to read and translate than modern art. Anyways, Hippocrates and his band of merry men believed that colds resulted from excessive waste matter that had built up in the brain, and this was before the invention of video games! Watery eyes, runny noses, the cranial pressure, and blocked ears were simply manifestations of an overflow of this stuff.

Related to waste matter was the theory of the four humors, which have nothing to do with the original Marx Brothers. Instead, this was a long-held belief that yellow and black bile, phlegm, and blood were four humors, or liquids, believed to exist in the human body, which in turn, were in some mystical way related to the four elements of air, fire, water, and earth and the four seasons. Any imbalance in these humors supposedly resulted in illness, including the common cold. If you believe that we’re too educated and sophisticated today to fall for such silliness, tune in to some late-night infomercials.

Sometimes the treatment was worse than the disease. This was true during Hippocrates’ time when one of the proposed cures for the common cold was bloodletting. There were generally two forms of bloodletting: first, cutting an artery or vein open to release the “bad blood,” or second, sucking the blood out by attaching leeches to the flesh. Mind you, the act of bloodletting was based on the scientific theory of the time that waste had built up in the system. The scientific method obviously had not yet been perfected. Many a person died being treated for a simple cold.

To his credit, Hippocrates was not an advocate of bloodletting as a cure, but we can’t let him off the ignoramus train too quickly. He did believe that an imbalance in the four humors caused illnesses. Luckily for us, as history progressed, so did science and reason. Not so lucky for our ancestors is that bloodletting was still practiced in 1799 when it’s likely that George Washington died by being bled to death while his doctor tried to resolve an infected throat. Throughout the years standard herbal treatments were also used for colds. Again, it had to do more with observational guesses than scientifically based knowledge.

There were no shortages of theories, though. One Roman intellectual and writer, Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79), no relation to Artie the Elder, had his own scientifically sound ideas for curing sneezing and coughing. Pliny was more of an observer than a scientist, who toward the end of his life, finished a 37-volume work he entitled Natural History, which covered a broad range of topics. Volume 26 dealt with diseases and remedies. One of his suggestions for stemming coughs and sneezes was to kiss the furry nose of a mouse. And Pliny was an intellectual!

Another suggested cure at this time was to sleep with The Iliad under one’s head. Only a passage from Book IV was said to work. No kidding.

Scientifically unsound cures continued to abound in ancient times. Dry cupping was another method employed to relieve our poor ancestors from the common cold. This system, still being used in parts of Asia and South America — believe it or not — was an idea for ridding the body of those nasty toxins. First, a small amount of alcohol is poured into one or up to six glass cups. The alcohol is lit. The fire-filled glasses are flipped upside down onto the patient’s back. No pain, no gain. The lack of oxygen extinguishes the flame, which creates a vacuum. The result is the sucking of the blood (or toxins) up to the skin’s surface and, voila, no more wiping your nose with your shirt sleeve. Some HMO’s still insisted on kissing a rodent’s nose. As for wet cupping, trust me, you don’t want to know.

Although these methods might seem crude and ignorant to us, relief of the cold symptoms may, in fact, have been effective in one sense. For example, anyone with a hot glass jar on his or her back that created a large, fat, painful hickey would probably, at least temporarily, forget all about any nagging cold symptoms. That goes double for bloodletting.

Rome eventually collapsed because, basically, it became too big for its own britches and other historical reasons. The Middle Ages (roughly from the 5th century to the 15th century) followed, giving rise to a system composed of Kings, Queens, Knights, and the chess board. The dominant influence on peoples’ lives was the Catholic Church, which invented the collection plate. This wasn’t the most creative of historical periods, healthcare-wise. You could say the era was scientifically challenged.

Almost all Middle Agers were Catholic. When the Church told people to jump, they asked “off which cliff?” The Church, along with everyone else, was unaware that microbes were the invisible ne’er-do-wells responsible for illnesses and transmission of diseases since germs had yet to be observed under a microscope. Relying on whatever questionable “proof” they could muster, the Catholic Church preached that cold symptoms, along with other illnesses, were signs of evil to come or of demons attempting to invade the body.

In the Church’s humble opinion, the person who sneezed had expelled one’s soul out of the body, at least temporarily, if not permanently. If the soul was MIA, then a devil or demon could take up residence in its stead. “God bless you,” the knee-jerk response to a sneeze still uttered today, is basically a brief prayer aimed at the sneezer. The short recitation offers protection from the evil spirit, until the soul, hopefully, has the opportunity to reenter the body.

By this time, prayer was also carried in the physician’s bag for “curing” colds and other illnesses. In most cases, colds naturally and eventually disappeared, so to observers of the time, prayer appeared to have done the trick.

Other cold cures advanced by the church were garlic necklaces, which could also ward off werewolves and ugly blind dates, and collars made of salted herring, which kept evil away from the throat. A more colorful treatment for the common cold was to remove hair from the cold sufferer, put it in a sandwich and feed it to a village dog. The idea behind this inventive, Catholic Church-approved remedy “worked” because, theoretically, the cold would be removed from the body along with the hair and deposited in the dog’s gastrointestinal tract. Undoubtedly, the ASPCA had its hands full in medieval times.

Although the true cause of the common cold was a few centuries away, the actual beginnings of the discovery started in the 17th century when a Dutch

lens maker, Antonie Van Leeuwenhoak, discovered the existence of bacteria under a primitive microscope. Unfortunately, at the time, no one was ready to tie these “bugs” to diseases.

Almost since the beginning of common-cold theory, the public embraced the idea that climatic factors, such as heat, cold, and wetness, were directly responsible for colds. Whether it was wearing wet clothes, leaving the window open at night, living in a damp house, or running around with dripping hair or cold feet, the conventional wisdom was that atmospheric condi- tions could activate a cold.

In a 1747 book preacher John Wesley wrote that cold baths promoted perspiration and blood circulation, which prevented colds. “Wise parents should dip their children in cold water every morning till they are three-quarters old,” he suggested. Another treatment he mentioned was to roll up orange peels and stuff them into each nostril. There’s no doubt the cold sufferer would feel greatly relieved…once the rinds were removed.

In the 18th century, the great American statesman, inventor, scientist, and inveterate flirt Ben Franklin challenged the relationship between temperatures and the common cold. Franklin used to swim for a couple of hours every day for his daily exercise. He also traveled in freezing weather. If wetness and coldness were conditions necessary for a cold, why wasn’t he more susceptible than any other person, he asked. “Go fly a kite,” responded his contemporaries. Franklin was also one of the first to suggest that somehow people caught colds from each other by transmission of something through the air, even though the cold “bug” had yet to be discovered.

It was during the 18th century that the art of quackery exploded. “There’s a sucker born every minute.” (This quote attributed to P.T Barnum was in all likelihood spoken by a competitor.) Today, it’s every seven seconds. Scientific discoveries were booming and there was no shortage of con artists willing to take advantage of misapplication of the scientific advances. A gullible public was available for the taking.

Advertisements for medicines and medical devices promised cures for diseases, including the common cold. Like today, medical and governmental authorities were unable to stop the onslaught. The metallic tractor, psychometer, electric belts, phrenology machines, and the spectochrome were just a few of the devices that promised to cure the sick.

In 19th century America, people turned away from mystical cures and remedies passed down from their relatives in favor of pills, potions, and powders as a cure for anything that ailed them, including the common cold. Modern advertising was born, along with the snake-oil salesman. Newspaper and magazine ads screamed the benefits of these elixirs, which were sold in drugstores or from the back of traveling medicine show wagons.

Most “medicines” were harmless, but some were punched up with alcohol or dangerous narcotic drugs (morphine, cocaine, and heroin). Its primary benefit was to give folks a buzz. “Hey, what symptoms?” Unfortunately, addiction was becoming a problem. Finally, in 1914 Congress passed the Harrison Act to regulate sales of narcotics, and then immediately passed themselves a pay raise. Nasal sprays were filled with sea water, herb teas, and cocaine-based remedies.

Not all “cures” deserved to be run out of Dodge. One treatment was to fill jars with mint leaves, camphorated oil, and other “congestion relievers.” When the jar was heated, it released “healing fumes.” It basically acted as a vaporizer, which helped break up the mucus allowing cold victims to breathe easier.

Also, near the end of the 19th century, a German company, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, synthesized the new drug acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin. It was used more of a pain reliever than it was to reduce fever. As its popularity grew, it was used for both as well as for relief of cold symptoms. By and large, however, most “remedies” relieved the “sucker” from his money instead of the common cold.

In the midst of all these bogus claims and promises for curing colds, around the middle of the 1800s, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur successfully proved the germ theory of disease. Harmful bacteria were the culprits. This major breakthrough led the way for specific vaccination against specific bacteria. Before these landmark discoveries, inoculations were used to protect against a few diseases like smallpox, but no one really understood the mechanisms behind the success of this protective method.

Unfortunately, viruses, which are the reasons we catch colds, are miniscule nudniks and can’t be observed with the standard microscope. Since no one knew they existed, the faithful believed that colds were bacterially induced. A few researchers even went so far as to inject people with the dead bacteria taken from a cold sufferer’s nose, believing that these agents were catalysts for colds. Clinical trials were far from perfect at the time and since a person may then not show symptoms of a cold for a few months, they incorrectly thought they were onto something. For some reason, cold vaccines were still being prescribed into the mid 1900s.

Even though scientists were tinkering around with the bacterial theory, the climate-health relationship never really disappeared in the public’s or some scientists’ mind. Medical literature around this time was still associating colds with chills.

By now, however, the germ theory of disease was taking front and center stage. Research techniques were improving. Science was moving in the right direction. Still, however, a connection between “germs” and the common cold wasn’t yet established. Traditional beliefs were hanging on for dear life.

It wasn’t really until 1898 that Dutch scientist, Martinus Beijerinck, through some snazzy experimentation, arrived at the conclusion that we were sharing the planet with another animalcule, smaller than bacteria, and gave it the name of “virus,” although viruses weren’t actually viewed until the advent of the electron microscope in the 1930s.

As scientists continued to study the effects of the mysterious microbes, society brimmed with new hope that all diseases had an agent and that someday all of these agents could be eradicated once the culprit was identified swimming around under the lens of a microscope.

In the years before WWI, Walter Kruse, a German researcher, conducted an experiment in which he removed the secretions from a cold-suffering, colleague’s nose, and reintroduced the final solution into the nostrils of some volunteer. Almost half developed a cold. Although viruses were only a theory at that time, he was betting that its cause belonged “to the group of invisible…germs” and not bacteria. Although Kruse’s experiments presented additional evidence of viruses, scientific literature about colds written twenty years later still leaned toward the idea that they were bacterially connected. The virus theory is mentioned only in passing.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that the link between the common cold and viral anaerobes was finally established. During this time, Dr. Christopher Andrewes of Great Britain decided to challenge the common cold head on, mano a mano. In his quest, he finally isolated the cold virus, but soon the initial hope of eradicating this ubiquitous, minor scourge became a questionable notion. Andrewes discovered that the common cold wasn’t so common after all. It was caused by a number of viruses. A single vaccine wouldn’t be practical because the fight wasn’t against a single, isolated virus. However, this intense research wasn’t in vain. At the very least, Andrewes and his colleagues unearthed the secret of cold virus transmission (generally from a contaminated hand to an uncontaminated nose).

Unfortunately, the further researchers looked into the cold viruses, the more varieties they found. By the early 1960s, dozens of different kinds of cold viruses were responsible for the sniffles. That was the tip of the iceberg. Any chance of curing the cold was dashed by the 1980s, when over 200 hundred different types of cold viruses were identified. Who knew? Today, unlike long, long ago and even short, short ago, scientists and the public have a much clearer understanding of the causes of the common cold. We are certainly in a better position to reject the old and new useless remedies. Right? Not so fast, Horatio. Well, let’s look a bit more closely at some of the claims for cures that have been suggested most recently. In fact, some traditional causes and “remedies” die hard.

Moms are still warning children “to stay out of the rain,” “don’t let your feet get cold,” “don’t go outside with wet hair,” “make sure you wear a coat when you go outdoors,” “wear a hat,” “you’ll catch a death of a cold,” or some version, thereof. Even mothers can be wrong.

One of the most popular current claims for a common cold cure is vitamin C. Linus Pauling, a vitamin C proponent, or fanatic, take your pick, was a 2-time Nobel Prize winner. He claimed that mega doses of vitamin C (he took up to 40,000 mg a day) would prevent or cure the common cold. Studies and research results have been mixed at best. There’s an outside possibility that it may reduce the length of cold symptoms, but there’s no agreement on that issue. The “C” vitamin obviously has no effect on cancer either, since he died of the disease. Along with the Nobel Prizes, how about a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Mr. Pauling? When you have felt a cold coming on, have you thought about your chiropractor? Why not? Page through some chiropractic trade magazines and you’ll discover dozens of ads for ten-minute common-cold cures through manipulation! Seventy-five bucks is a small price to pay to THINK you feel better, isn’t it? Ask and maybe your chiropractor will toss in a subluxation “fix” for half price.

Echinacea is another highly touted cure for the cold …by the medicinal-herb industry, which can make any claim it wants, since herbal “drugs” are unregulated. Echinacea is a wildflower, so it is labeled as “natural,” therefore it must be good for you, like poison ivy, which is also “natural,” so why not add it to your next garden salad. Eat up. It’s supposed to boost the immunity system, but instead it has been more effective boosting the herbal industries’ bottom line. Unfortunately, research on its effect on colds has been inconclusive, which in the parlance of real science means “it don’t work.”

Zinc in the form of lozenges is also being sold as a cold reliever. Zinc tests are also inconclusive, which means…were you paying attention in the previous paragraph? Other cold-remedy claims include pineapple juice, grapefruit juice, aroma therapy, and acupuncture. There may actually be some interesting results when trying all of these cures. By the time you work your way down the list, your cold will already have run its course.

A recent study suggests that even elevator music may prevent the common cold. Supposedly, the music and motion stimulates immunoglobulin production, which offers protection against certain organisms. At least if you’re taken for a ride on the elevator, there’s no charge.

A certain percentage of cold patients insist on a prescription for antibiotics. Listen to thy physician. Here are the cold, hard facts, folks: antibiotics are a treatment against bacterial infection, not viral infections. Although antibiotics have been tested for the common cold (the thinking was that maybe viruses and bacteria could be, in some strange way, working symbiotically to cause the havoc), the results have proved negative. However, since possible side effects of antibiotics are nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, incorporating them in your treatment may well distract you from the “resh which makes ill the seven apertures of the head.”

Although cures are nonexistent, there are some remedies the ancients recommended that can help with some of the symptoms: grandma’s chicken soup, for one, although any hot liquid will probably suffice to loosen up the congestion. A vaporizer can reduce the stuffy head and scratchy membranes. Over the counter decongestives and antihistamines offer some help for the symptoms. They don’t cure the cold and can actually rub you the wrong way with undesirable side effects. Last but not least is any placebo. If you think something makes you feel better, then it probably will.

Maybe someday a cure will come along, possibly through genetic engineering or through some new biological discovery. Until then, your best bet for winning the battle against the common cold is prevention. Cold viruses can live on surfaces for 1 to 3 hours. If you touch a contaminated surface, like a door knob, and then use the same finger with which to pick your nose (we all do it) or rub your eyes, you’re giving the viruses a chance to “vacation” in your cells. Keep your hands away from your face, especially after shaking hands with a cold sufferer. Avoid a direct hit from someone who’s coughing or sneezing. Don’t forget to say “God bless you” for no apparent reason. And wash your hands frequently.

True Believer

by Yves Barbero

Reprinted from the October-December, 2006 BASIS

belief, n: an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof; a firmly held opinion or conviction. a religious conviction.
ideology, n: a system of ideas and ideals forming the basis of an economic or political theory.
(Oxford Dictionary,10th Edition)


“Everybody believes in something,” the preacher said.

He’s right, of course, and I’d heard it before. It’s one of the standard talking points of those trying to convert you to something or other, either ideological or religious. But hearing it from this likable man, who bears me no ill will, and genuinely thinks that he’s doing me a service by trying to convert me, made me decide to revisit the notion of belief. Since the preacher was talking about a cosmic belief, let’s start there. I believe, and cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt, two things of cosmic consequence. The first is that there is one universe, not divisible by the natural and supernatural. The second is that the laws of physics are the same everywhere (we may not understand them completely, but they are nevertheless the same everywhere). Technically, this makes me an agnostic on religious matters. I remain intensely interested in the effect religion has on the human condition, but I am, frankly, indifferent to the veracity of religion since it cannot be proved one way or the other by any intellectual mechanism I find acceptable.

We are all clever, and my clever little retort, when asked, for instance, why I “believe” in evolution, is that I don’t “believe” in evolution, I accept it as the best explanation of how we got from the Big Bang to here. I add that I’d drop it in a second, without hesitation, if someone came up with a better explanation. I think it unlikely, but I have the mind-set of a Twenty-first Century man. Who knows how they’ll be thinking in 400 years? They certainly thought differently in Galileo’s time.

This neatly tucks things in, but won’t satisfy a lot of people. I differ from the believer in that I don’t expect to find all the answers in my lifetime. Richard Feynman, the physicist and Nobel laureate, was quoted as saying he’d rather die ignorant of something, than die firmly believing something erroneous (James Gleick in the closing paragraph of Genius, 1992). I find this the enlightened view.

The implication that the preacher was making was that as long as you “believe” in something, it makes perfect sense to “believe” in what he is preaching. My retort, a bit glib perhaps, was that if we were in India, he might be saying that about Hinduism.

This is not an argument against religion. It is an argument that religion, while perhaps rationally structured internally, cannot be reconciled with any universal mechanism of intellectual inquiry (the scientific method). If you are religious, it is blind faith. Some people have it, and some people don’t.

On the more vulgar level, we have ideology, the secular equivalent of belief. Ideologies were the terror of the Twentieth Century. Millions were killed over them. If it is predestined by history that something shall come to pass, why is it necessary to kill over it? Lay back and enjoy it, or at least, try to stay out of the crossfire.

The current ideology is the so-called free market. I won’t argue that those markets aren’t to the good. If anything, when market principles are applied, and each individual makes his own decisions, there is a lot less paperwork. But markets aren’t everything. What society will let its citizens suffer, especially if the government can be recalled through democratic elections, by allowing completely unfettered markets? It would certainly be profitable to sell F-22s to Iran, but no American administration, at this time in history, would allow it. We don’t allow the selling of children into brothels, although, unfortunately, there is a market for it.

It is better to be a person of principle, than ideology. The difference is that a person of principle understands that things may not go his way. He could lose. It isn’t written in the wind. It very much resembles the scientific notion of falsifiability, in that an experiment has the possibility of failing. Your principles may not stand the test of time.

So if by “principle”, you see a free market system as a desirable goal (as I do), you’re not bound by all the hair-brained notions advanced by ideologues. Compulsory education, social security, flu shots for kids, and yes, taxation, may make sense. Even if you have, in true free market fashion, commercial fire departments competing against each other, the city might insist you choose one. It will insist that the fire companies meet certain criteria in training and equipment. Nothing is pure. Tweaking is where the political debate comes in.

Principles should be driven by ethics. Because it says, “Thou shall not kill,” in the Bible, and you’re not a religious person, it doesn’t follow that you should go out and kill. All communities, however they justify it, have behavioral rules. Embrace them or fight them based on principles you’ve developed or adopted. Adopt them from religious sources, or modern relativistic ethics. It doesn’t matter if you have that proper balance between community, family, and self.

Skeptics – Hard-nosed vs, Supportive?

by John R. Cole

Reprinted from the October-December, 2006 BASIS

There are some clear-cut frauds skeptics confront, and there are crusading zealots who latch on to baseless pseudo- scientific claims, but there are others more problematical. “Professional creationists” believe their case stands up to scientific scrutiny or can be foisted on the public politically or via PR campaigns, despite scientific opposition. It is easy to pull out the stops to hit at Uri Geller or The Discovery Institute or the Institute for Creation Research or Erich von Daniken. They’ve asked for it, entering the public arena–and think they have the upper hand via the publicity mill (despite claims of persecution used to cement their supposed populist status).

Then there is the phenomenon of “fringe scholars” and “professional martyrs” with academic degrees and idees fixees who stake out often sensationalistic turf and dare small-minded skeptics to get with it or get out of the way (e.g., Immanuel Vellikovsky, Barry Fell, et al.). The last remaining mimeograph machines are probably in the hands of such true believers (although the Net is of course their new domain).

Leaders of cult-like science movements are safe targets for skeptics. Indeed, they often exaggerate and exploit their “followship.” Believers are another story.

How does one respond to what I would consider pseudoscientific fraud perpetuated by people who do not initiate it but are caught up in it? This dilemma is amplified when the “speaker” is a child (indeed, creationists and others have been turning to child-spokespersons for creationism, school prayer, and the like who echo “adult” creationist arguments verbatim). It is tactically and emotionally wrong simply to attack “kids’ beliefs.”

I tried to respond constructively to a teen columnist in the Hayward Daily Review (10/26/06). I did not want to attack my subject with sarcasm, devastating logic or thunder when she thought she was presenting a seamless critique of evolution–odds are, I could mount a better rhetorical case from experience alone. Instead, I tried to ask her to question her sources which I questioned, not her or her motives. The following is no ultimate exemplar, but I submit it as an attempt and urge readers to improve on the approach.

”Battle” over evolution long since resolved

Mary Sue Daoud writes spiritedly about the supposed “evolution vs. creationism battle” as if it were a current debate rather than an issue resolved a century or more ago (“The battle: Creationism vs. evolution,” Coming of Age, Oct 23)

I urge her to actually read evolutionists rather than do her research via a dictionary sound bite. Darwin himself is still accessible and eloquent, but much has been learned since his day–including genetics and a vast amount of fossil evidence research.

She might look into collected essays by Steve Gould, for example, with their information about transitional fossils, natural selection, and supposed “mysteries” or puzzles in evolution. And a new annotated edition of basic Darwin writings by E.O. Wilson is available (“From so simple a beginning”).