MEDICINAL TREATMENT OF THE COMMON COLD

Abstract

Although the public takes more medication for colds, both on prescription and without prescription, than for the treatment of any other illness, little of real significance has been written concerning the treatment of colds. The Thomsons,¹in their exhaustive review of over 2,000 papers on the common cold, devote only about five out of 700 pages to the subject of general medicinal treatment and then conclude concerning the various drugs which they mention that "no doubt all of these are of some value. Nevertheless, they frequently fail to produce the desired effect so that one cannot be by any means certain of their efficiency." In view of such knowledge, it seems like distinct temerity to suggest that certain well known drugs are of definite value in the treatment of colds; but this is what it seems one must conclude, tentatively at least, from the results of a controlled study of