HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1941, Page 2

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

TREATMENT OF COMMON COMPLAINTS.

ORDINARY COLDS.

(Prepared and issued by the Health

Department)

We have all met him. He goes round sniffling and sneezing and looking a little pink about the nose, and spreading largesse in the shape of infection with almost unrestricted freedom. He has a big dose of the good old-fash-ioned cold. His place is in bed. But mention the word bed, and your sympathetic suggestion falls definitely flat. The victim replies with some indignation, and in clogged accents, that he has never mollycoddled himself because of a cold, and he isn’t going to start now.

That is just being plain obstinate. And it dees not pay to be obstinate with a common cold. The trouble is that most people expect to get a cold and put up with the misery of it 1 for days, and perhaps weeks, as a matter of course. It is a mistake. You might get away with it a few times, but there may come a time when you are not as robust as you might be, when your bodily resistance is a little below par. That is when trouble is liable to start if that too-often neglected cold is not watched.

Once the cold does get you, it is just as well to be sensible about it. Rost in bed, or indoors. While you are doing that you are helping yourself and helping others by not going round spreading infection all over the place. Moreover, the office or factory would sooner spare you for two or three days now, than for possibly weeks later on.

Drink plenty of water and fruit juices —orange and lemon —eat light and simple food. Take a hot bath and sip a hot lemon juice before tumbling into a warm bed. it makes you perspiic in a pleasantly comfortable fashion. There is nothing better. The Important thing is to clear a cold up quickly. If it persists for more than a reasonable time with this treatment, call in your doctor. Usually, however, two. or three days’ attention will dispose of a really bad bout, and, incidentally, tone up the whole system wonderfully.. Its much nicer than getting pneumonia or tuberculosis.