Beneficial Colds

In the summer people get encephalitis ("sleeping sickness") and poliomyelitis ("infantile paralysis"). In the winter people get sore throats, running noses, influenza. The fact that there are no pandemics of colds in the summer or infantile paralysis in the winter set Dr. Charles Armstrong, virus expert of the U. S. Public Health Service, to thinking. It set him thinking even harder when mice, inoculated with sleeping sickness virus, died just as often at temperatures of 42DEG F. as they did at temperatures of 95DEG F. Since sleeping sickness and infantile paralysis both enter the body through the nose, Dr. Armstrong suspected that winter snufflings and colds in some manner prevented the spread of the more terrifying diseases.

Last week in Public Health Reports Dr. Armstrong told how he worked out his hunch. He washed the noses of normal white mice with salt water, then pooled the washings and dropped minute amounts of bacteria grown from the mixture into the nostrils of 200 mice several times in one week. After two days' rest he inoculated their noses, and the noses of 100 healthy control mice, with large quantities of sleeping sickness virus. More than 60% of the mice with "colds" survived the sleeping sickness injections; of the healthy, untreated mice, less than 25% survived. It was not the nasal bacteria which saved the mice, said Dr. Armstrong. Rather the bacteria stimulated production of defensive leucocytes (white blood cells) which poured into the nose in great numbers. The fortifying leucocytes provided protection for at least five days.

Although he hinted that his experiments may lead to practical immunizing measures against infantile paralysis as well as sleeping sickness, Dr. Armstrong did not advise that anyone court a cold, as a defense against worse ills. Said he: "We must be careful in reasoning from mice to man."

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