A real bit of medical advice or old wives tale? If it is true then how so?
People thought that food, acting like a fuel, would heat up the body when consumed. Therefore, if you had cold and needed heating up, consume more food. Likewise, if you had a fever, reducing the fuel would cool you off.
Since colds and fevers don’t work like that, it’s not particularly useful medical advice.
I don’t know about Grandma’s advice, but I rely on the Spritle axiom:
Feed a cold, feed a fever. :D:D
Perhaps this is why I’m a bit “thick in the middle”…
I swear. Sometime one just wants to cry.
This message board has a sponsor. The sponsor is the distributor of an alternative newspaper columnist who, from time to time, answers questions of just this sort. The column itself has a pretty catchy name.
You might want to check it out. As an example of what you’re missing, here’s a guy named Cecil Adams with the, uh, Straight Dope on the subject of Is it “feed a cold, starve a fever” or vice versa? And should you?
Hey, manhattan, do you think he knows anything about words ending in -gry?
<d&r>