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The common cold's theatricality is so obvious that one can classify the styles of cold suffering by labeling the roles that get played: the hero (who insists on coming to work), the martyr (who cannot afford not to come to work), the opportunist (who would not dream of staying away from work for less than a week). To specialists like Robert H. Waldman, chairman of the department of medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, the cold as psychological event seems almost as clear. Waldman points out that the cold allows the typical adult to retreat from everyday pressures, adding: "If we did away with it—if we cured the common cold—we might well have to face an increase in hypertension, depression and related problems." Nobody who has either received or poured forth the human sympathy that a good cold provokes can fail to be convinced that one of the disease's fortunate aspects is entirely social.
Given the cost of colds, as well as the outright danger they represent when they attack somebody who is otherwise seriously ailing, the search for a way to prevent them must go on. But everybody should be forewarned that if the search ever succeeds the cold will be missed in more ways than one.
—By Frank Trippett