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How to Cure a Cold

Dr. G.

Johnson, Professor of Medicine in King's College, London, in a recent lecture gives the following cure for a cold On the whole, the plan which combines the greatest degree of efficiency with universal applicability, consists in the use of a simple hot-air bath, which the patient can have in his own bed-room.

All that is required is a tin spirit lamp, with a sufficiently large wick, and holding sufficient spirit to burn for half an hour. The patient sits undressed in a chair with a lamp between his feet, rather than under the chair, care being taken to avoid setting fire to the blankets, of which an attendant takes two or three, and folds them around the patient from his neck to the floor, SO as to inclose him and the lamp, the hot air from which passes freely around the body. In from a quarter to half an hour there is usually a free perspiration, which may be kept up for a time by getting into bed between hot blankets. Headache, pain in the limbs, and other premonitory indications of a severe cold, may be entirely removed in the course of half an hour by the action of the hot-air bath.

Another simple and efficient mode of exciting the action of the skin consists in wrapping the undressed patient in a sheet wrung out of warm water, then over this folding two or three blankets. The patient may remain thus packed for an hour or two, until free perspiration has been excited.