haking issues
paused reverently upon the unplugging of a nose, the clearing of a
rhinorrheic throat. Other illnesses brought disability, even death in
their wake; the common cold merely brought torment to the millions as it
implacably resisted the most superhuman of efforts to curb it.

Until that chill, rainy November day when the tidings broke to the world
in four-inch banner heads:

COFFIN NAILS LID ON COMMON COLD

"No More Coughin'" States Co-Finder of Cure

SNIFFLES SNIPED: SINGLE SHOT TO SAVE SNEEZERS

In medical circles it was called the Coffin Multicentric Upper
Respiratory Virus-Inhibiting Vaccine; but the papers could never stand
for such high-sounding names, and called it, simply, "The Coffin Cure."

Below the banner heads, world-renowned feature writers expounded in
reverent terms the story of the leviathan struggle of Dr. Chauncey
Patrick Coffin (_et al._) in solving this riddle of the ages: how, after
years of failure, they ultimately succeeded in culturing the causative
agent of the common cold, identifying it not as a single virus or group
of viruses, but as a multicentric virus complex invading the soft mucous
linings of the nose, throat and eyes, capable of altering its basic
molecular structure at any time to resist efforts of the body from
within, or the physician from without, to attack and dispel it; how the
hypothesis was set forth by Dr. Phillip Dawson that the virus could be
destroyed only by an antibody which could "freeze" the virus-complex in
one form long enough for normal body defenses to dispose of the
offending invader; the exhausting search for such a "crippling agent,"
and the final crowning success after injecting untold gallons of
cold-virus material into the hides of a group of co-operative and
forbearing dogs (a species which never suffered from colds, and hence
endured the whole business with an air of affectionate boredom).

And finally, the testing. First, Coffin himself (who was suffering a
particularly horrendous case of the affliction he sought to cure); then
his assistants Phillip Dawson and Jacob Miles; then a multitude of
students from the University--carefully chosen for the severity of their
symptoms, the longevity of their colds, their tendency to acquire them
on little or no provocation, and their utter inability to get rid of
them with any known medical program.

They were a sorry spectacle, those students filing through the Coffin
laboratory for th