Article December 10, 1910 Issue

Dr. William Brady of Elmira, N. Y., declares, practically...

Medical Record

Dr. William Brady of Elmira, N. Y., declares, practically, that there is no such thing as "catching cold." He classes "catching cold" as one of the "phobias," and has gone so far as to write an article with the title "The Catching Cold Phobia." He asserts that "the catching cold bogey proves a most deplorable obstacle to present methods of palliation and eradication of disease, and the responsibility for the well-nigh universal worship of this false image rests largely on our [the doctors'] own shoulders, since the stupid habit of speaking of 'taking cold' prevails quite as widely among physicians as the laity."

The writer declares, moreover, that Mrs. Eddy may very well have had "catching cold" in mind when she wrote: "Disease arises, ... through association,—calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body" (Science and Health, p. 154). Here are some of Dr. Brady's views on the subject:—

"One can scarcely form an adequate conception of the abuse of this nonentity unless one makes an endeavor to avoid reference to cold, in the colloquial sense, in conversation with patients. In general practice it is really a problem to elicit a history from a patient of even high intelligence without recourse to this vicious phrase; fully ninetenths of our patients believe, if they have not already been told, that their aliments are caused or aggravated by 'taking cold.' The very exceptional case in which the history does not gratuitously open with a 'cold' somewhere or other, will promptly rise to the bait of a leading question, put by the physician, bearing on the probable cause of the illness. Therefore the adjective universal is advisedly applied to this abuse in the preceding paragraph.

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