Cause of Colds

The $195,000 which the Chemical Foundation gave Johns Hopkins for a five-year investigation of the Common Cold (TIME, Jan. 23, 1928), last week produced three clear facts: 1) colds are not the result of chemical changes in the body as has been theorized; 2) colds are not directly caused by micrococcus coryza described by Dr. John Arthur Franklin Pfeiffer of Baltimore (TIME, June 23), or by any other visible germ; 3) colds are apparently caused by a virus, which the finest of filters cannot trap and whose source has not yet been ascertained.

Reporters of these findings were Dr. James Angus Doull, formerly of Johns Hopkins, now professor of preventive medicine at Western Reserve University (Cleveland) ; and Dr. Perrin Hamilton Long of Johns Hopkins. The John Jacob Abel Fund (Chemical Foundation's $195,000) paid their expenses. The two researchers got their cold virus in the first instance from the noses and throats of persons plainly suffering from colds. Those secretions they put through filters which were so fine that the smallest known germs could not get through. This filtrate they dabbed in the nostrils of perfectly healthy volunteers, among them girls of Goucher College, Baltimore. Enough of the "tests" developed colds to prove the filtrate the causative agent. Unfortunately Drs. Doull and Long have not been able to develop the virus in the laboratory. If that becomes possible or if the germ or germs which generate the virus are discovered, immunologists may develop a preventive for an annoying dis ease which inconveniences four out of ten men and seven out of ten women in the U. S. twice a year (October and January), and yearly causes a two-billion-dollar loss in wages.

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