The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

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HOW TO AVOID CATCHING COLD.

We may be strongly predisposed to any disease, and
yet escape it by carefully avoiding the causes which
excite it; or, on the other hand, we may fortify ourselves against the exciting causes of disease by removing all predisposing causes of it. Or we may be doubly
secure by removing and avoiding both the predisposing
and exciting causes.
Among the predisposing causes of colds, there is
probably no one so important as error of diet, which I
have more fully discussed in another chapter, viz., the
error of taking too much of carboniferous or heatproducing food, of which the representative articles are
butter, fine flour, and sugar, which keep the tissues of
the system in a state ready for the slightest exciting
cause of inflammation, just as the sheathing around a
steam-boiler is made ready to ignite by the slightest
spark of fire; and as the greatest care must be taken to
keep the spark of fire from such inflammable boards
and timbers, so those who live on this unnatural, inflammation-producing food, must be scrupulously careful to avoid the exciting causes of cold; and common
observation will support the assertion that those who
live most exclusively on food as Nature furnishes it,
are the least subject to colds, and best able to resist
their deleterious influences.
Another predisposing cause is unnatural tenderness
and susceptibility of the skin from want of friction or
bathing, which will be explained in a chapter devoted
to the subject of bathing and external friction. The
most prominent exciting cause of colds, and the inflam