When you begin to shiver and sneeze and run at the eyes you are not "catching" cold; you have already caught it long before, and it is beginning to break out on you. Mere exposure to cold will never cause sneezing. It takes a definite irritation of the nasal mucous membrane, by gas or dust from without, or toxins from within, to produce a sneeze. As to mere exposure to cold weather and wet and storm being able to produce it, it is the almost unanimous testimony of Arctic explorers that, during their sojourn of from two to three years in the frozen North, they never had so much as a sneeze or a sore throat, even though frequently sheltered in extemporized huts, and running short of adequate food-supply before spring. Within a week of their return to civilization they would begin sneezing and coughing, and catch furious colds. Lumbermen, trappers, hunters, and prospectors in Alaska give similar testimony. I have talked with scores of these pioneers, visiting them, in fact, in their camps under conditions of wet, cold, and exposure that would have made one afraid of either pneumonia or rheumatism before morning, and found that, so long as they remained up in the mountains or out in the snow, and no case of influenza, sore throat, or cold happened to be brought into the camp, they would be entirely free from coughs and colds; but that, upon returning to civilization and sleeping in the stuffy room of a rude frontier hotel, they would frequently catch cold within three days. One unusually intelligent foreman of a lumber camp in Oregon told me that an experience of this kind had occurred to him three different times that he could distinctly recollect. It is difficult to catch a cold or pneumonia unless the bacilli are there to be caught. Boswell has embalmed for us, in the amber of his matchless biography, the fact that it had been noted, even in those days, that the inhabitants of one of the Faroe Islands never had colds in the head except on the rare occasions when a ship would touch there--usually not oftener than once a year. Then, within a week, half the population would be blowing and sneezing. The great Samuel commented upon the fact at length, and advanced the ingenious explanation that, as the harbor was so difficult of entry, the ships could beat in only when the wind was in a certain quarter, and that quarter was the nor'east. _Hinc illae lacrimae!_ (Hence these weeps!) The colds were caused by the northeast wind of unsavory reputation! How often the wind got into the northeast without bringing a ship or colds he apparently did not speculate.