122 The Story of the Bacteria 



would be no "colds," as certainly as without 

 the powder there would be no explosion. 



People who really live out-of-doors do not 

 often have colds. When they come to town, 

 or get into closed rooms with the sneezing, 

 coughing urbanites, who live and move and 

 have their being in an atmosphere invisibly 

 lurid with bacteria fresh from infected sources, 

 then the outdoor folks catch, not the cold, 

 but the germ which does it. 



Colds, like pneumonia and tuberculosis, are 

 indoor diseases and savor of closed rooms, 

 foul and dusty air, crowded assembly places. 

 The vigorous jubilant home-comer from his 

 summer outing, who has been blown and 

 rained upon, who has spent shivering nights 

 under the stars, who has "cooled off" in the 

 wind and tramped in the water, who has pro- 

 longed his swim till he was blue, with never a 

 trace of ill, gets a cold a week after he comes 

 back to town. He blames the open window 

 by which he sat to relieve himself of the 

 stuffiness of his city home. But he forgets 

 the ill cleaned dusty car with its scores of 

 germ-dispensing occupants in which he trav- 



