We’d sent a man to the moon, but there were still some things we could not do
The Observer Magazine of 4 October 1970 was all about ‘keeping spirits up when the mercury’s down’. Medical correspondent Christine Doyle began with a brief history of the cold and flu.
‘Ingenious man can send himself to the Moon,’ wrote Doyle, ‘but he cannot prevent or cure a cold which develops on the way.’ Some of the detail is spookily familiar, referring to the difference between rhino viruses and corona viruses, which are ‘thought to be responsible for very heavy and runny colds in mid-winter’. If only they’d stayed that way.