CATCHING COLD.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Your delightfully disgusting essay on "Catching Cold" omits one of the most frequent causes, namely, letting the fire go down. Stingy people often do this the last thing at night, excusing themselvos. by something that "the poet says" about "embers." But studious and meditative fellows (like me and you), who are above stinginess—and whole empyreans above excusing it out of " II Penseroso," and ell that—are very apt, while read- ing intently, or settling the Infinite in what they are pleased to call their minds, to allow the fire to get just a leetle too low. Then we are "gone 'coons," at least I speak for myself. Other causes are innumerable. In a hurry, you get into a cab, or an omnibus, or have a rapid chat in a friend's office, and suddenly become conscious of a draught. It is all over in a moment; you are lost.
The sort of cold that hypermsthetical wretches so frequently suffer from (except when the thermometer is at 70° in the shade and the wind S.W.) is1 not what is (I believe) called coryza. There is no sniffling, snuffling, or "running." The beastly thing takes a clear day to incubate. On the third day you are "'ware," as the old ballads say, of pains in the limbs, wretched weakness, a tendency to wandering thoughts, and a hot, red rim under each finger-nail. Now, this cold will run its course ; the best alleviators, in my opinion, being some of the water-cure processes (and they are well worth the trouble). Quinine? I do not call quinine disagreeable; but there are those on whom it produces certain effects which need not be described, but which cannot be re- peated with impunity, and which would assuredly lead to more Muse. As for the headache (from quinine) of which you speak in such a debonair way, what if it is so bad as to make the eyes bloodshot, and put a stop to reading, writing, and human intercourse for a week P Then as to confinement for two days to one room of equable .temperature. Sir, I defy your doctor and. all his confinements. You may confine such a cold as I have described to twenty or thirty rooms of equable tempera- ture, if you like, but you will find he will have his five days' or his nine days' run. Will you draw out leviathan with an hook P Perhaps you will ; but you will not stop that cold, nor will you cure the hypereesthetic victim of his liability by the constant use of the cold douche, though this is both delightful and
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