READERS of Weather Eye last week may recall that I have of late been "pouring forth my soul abroad in ecstasy". Perhaps it was then that I encountered the virus that has resulted in what I modestly assume to be a common cold. Despite decently infrequent applications of a well known remedy, piping hot with cloves and sugar added, it seems intent on living out its normal span. Keats, I suspect, may well have had a common cold when he proclaimed himself "half in love with easeful death," declaring:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the mid night with no pain.
But a cold is rarely fatal, even if it makes an otherwise tolerable life quite miserable for its brief duration. But does it, as its name implies, have anything to do with temperature? Or, to put it in more grandiose terms, is it a meteorotropic ailment, one whose origins can be related to the weather?
The virus which causes the common cold is known to thrive in a cool, damp environment, but there appears to be no medical basis for the belief that getting your feet or hair wet during cold weather directly causes it. Doctors do tell us, however, that unpleasant and stressful experiences of this kind, and indeed atmospheric conditions in general, may well influence our resistance to such a viral infection. It may be that chilly and inclement weather predisposes one to catch a cold.
Some years ago, 200 families in Britain were followed for a year to compare their susceptibility to colds to the weather pertaining at the time. The average cold, according to the findings, lasted 5.7 days. It tended to develop during the day, rather than overnight, but showed no preference for any day of the week. The beginning of school year was marked by a noticeable increase in frequency, presumably because schoolchildren, and indeed their parents returning to work after summer holidays, were suddenly crowded together in the enclosed conditions ideal for the epidemic spread of such a virus.
The most interesting finding, however, was that the frequency of colds increased at times of fluctuating temperature, when the weather changed suddenly from warm to cold, or vice versa. It is not surprising, perhaps, that colds should peak with a sudden cooling of the weather, but they also peaked when there was a sudden warming, as happens often, for example, in the month of May. There was no observed connection with the absolute value of the temperature, with damp weather, or with variations in windiness or atmospheric pressure.