There are few things worse in life than a cough that won’t go away.
I’m being facetious of course; death, war and famine all spring to mind as significantly worse than a cough, but when you are ten days deep and your throat is on fire, your chest is heaving and your breathing is laboured, you could be forgiven for suggesting the ‘common cold’ as the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.
In 2022, we are actually extremely lucky. The treatments that we have for a cold are efficient, accessible and affordable. The same could not be said for our forefathers who went through a rigmarole which often left them slightly less well.
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Leeches
You all saw this coming, I suspect. It is the archetypal medical treatment for just about everything in the middle ages: Broken leg? Leech. Stomach ache? Leech. A crippling sense of ennui? Many leeches. The prevailing wisdom was that blood was responsible for hating your body, and so you could balance your temperature down by having a friendly leech suck some of that excess blood out. Of course, sometimes the bleeding didn’t end when the leech dropped off, and some patients found themselves in a life threatening position. Also, you didn’t know what else that leech had been sucking on, so there was always the risk that you could pick up a nasty bacterial infection for your troubles. It’s time like this when I thank God for modern medicine.
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Turps
In the 19th Century, we leapt out of the frying pan and into fire in the move from leeches to turps. The theory was that you should get a flannel blanket, douse it in boiling water with some turpentine for good measure – yes, turps, the toxic substance which we use today to strip paint. You would wrap the blanket around your head and inhale all that turpy goodness in the steam. The steam might have gone some way to relieving your cold, and that is why we still use this today. But the turps? Well, you would have picked up headaches, insomnia, bleeding in the lungs, vomiting, brain damage, a coma, or maybe even death. Thanks, I’ll ride out the cold.
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Mustard
Strange but true! This has actually been a remedy since Ancient Rome, and although it is the oldest of the remedies mentioned thus far, it is ironically the least deadly. You didn’t eat the mustard however. You would spread the paste between two pieces of cloth and drape it across your chest. While there is very little scientific evidence to suggest that this did anything at all, at least it would get you in the mood for lunch, and had very little risk of killing you.
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Chicken soup
The tried and true. Most of us can remember our parents ladeling up some chicken soup when we were kids. The beauty is, this remedy works! It isn’t just because it is hot and we are inhaling the steam, keeping our throats moist and warm. There is actually an amino acid in chicken called cysteine which acts as a decongestant! And even more amazingly, this was also touted by the Ancient Romans. In 60 CE a Roman surgeon named Pedacius Dioscorides wrote that this proved effective, and almost two thousand years later, we are still reaping the rewards.
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The humble Cuppa
Like chicken soup, this one is as old as the hills. And like Chicken soup, there is a good reason why we still use it. Certain teas (namely the leaves of the Ma Huang plant) contain pseudoephedrine which is still used today as a modern decongestant. Even your run of the mill Twinnings still does some good, as the steam and warmth around your throat will naturally help your throat to rally against the cold dryness in which an infection thrives.
Now jump forward to 2022. Some of these old remedies still hold sway. Some are barbaric and illegal. Either way, we have distilled the old remedies and pooled the best ingredients into modern treatments that are scientifically proven, available at the drop of a hat, and won’t cost you an arm and a leg (like some of these previous treatments might have done). Consider something like Codral Day and Night. This is an all in one treatment to give you relief at any hour of the day. The day time tablets work to relieve you of that pesky runny nose, the headaches, the body aches, fever and nasal congestion. Namely, all the things which make people back away from you like you’ve got… plague. Which in some ways, you do.
Conversely, the night time tablets take away all the things which prevent you from getting a good night sleep: fever, cough, sneezing and headaches. This is actually incredibly important because your body knows exactly how to heal itself, and sleep is the prime factor. We perpetuate our sickness if we aren’t getting adequate rest.
If Codral Day and Night sounds like a miracle cure, that is because in many ways, it is. It is a precise mix of pseudoephedrine which works to decongest your nasal passages (which in turn allows you to breathe) and paracetamol. This stops the pain receptors from reaching your brain so that everything that makes a cold the worst seems to vanish blissfully away. Lastly, it contains antihistamines. This attacks the histamines in your body which are triggered when there is a perceived threat. The problem is that the body’s way to expel this supposed ‘threat’ is to produce mucus to cough it out, trigger sneezing, and make your nose run. All of the stuff that makes you stuffy. Codral Day and Night is the original triple threat. Just a word to the wise: a medicine this potent needs to be taken with care. Please follow all of the instructions so that Codral Day and Night can be as effective as possible.
Yours in health,
Floyd
