Common Cold Germ Costs 40,000,000 Working Days Each Year: Virus Traced

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 89, 1 September 1948, Page 7

Common Cold Germ Costs 40,000,000 Working Days Each Year: Virus Traced

Doctors, scientists and volunteers have been busy trying to catch the common cold, with the result that a virus, one ten-thousandth of a millimetre in size has at last been traced. That minute object costs us 40,000,000 working days a year. Now a new problem arises, Viruses, which are infinitely smaller than bacteria, cannot .be seen through an ordinary microscope, but there is hope that the cold virus may be seen through the electronic microscope. Viruses are the problem children of the medical world. Ever since the first was tracked down in 1892—it was the cause, not of a human ailment, b,ut of a disease of the tobacco plant—scientists have been trying to cultivate them artificially. They refuse, however, to grow and multiply in anything but in man. Laboratory animals are useless in studying the common cold. - Monkeys, mice and rabbits don’t develop colds. Other diseases caused by viruses are smallpox, rabies, poliomyelitis, chicken pox, measles, mumps, influenza and a number of animal diseases, including foot and mouth disease, dog distemper and swine fever. With the exception of influenza and the common cold, most of the virus diseases do at least leave their victims immune from another attack for at least a period. Is there a cold-free country? Apparently not. If you live in the tropics, you are more liable to the feverish form, while in temperate climates you have the familiar streaming nose and eyes variety.