Your head ages and you sneeze and cough. Your nose is all stuffed up, and it keeps running, so you have to blow it every few minutes. You know by these symptoms that you have a cold, and you feel completely miseraple (very unhappy). You're not sure if you will live throught the day.

Everyone suffers from the common cold at some time or other. It is'nt a serious illness, but over a billion dollars a year is spent on different kinds of cold medicine every year. This medicine can relieve the symptoms. That is, it can make you cough less, make your headache less intense, and stop your nose running for a while. However, it can't cure your cold. So far, there is no cure for the common cold and no medicine to prevent it.

Even though there is no cure or preventive medicine for colds, people have all kinds of ideas about how to prevent and treat colds. Some people think that if you eat lots of onions, you won't catch cold. Others say that you should avoid getting wet and chilled (cold) or you will catch cold. However, this is apparently not so. In an experiment in England, a group of volunteers took a bath, put on cold wet clothing, and stood in cold rooms. Others stood outside in a cold rain until they were wet through to the skin.