Lo

Cold Sufferer T

Reviewed By
Don Noren
“VITAMIN C AND THE COM-
MON COLD,” by Linus Pauling
(Freeman, 122 pages, $1.95).

 

On Sunday, Dec. 13, I awoke
with a scratchy throat and the
first stages on head congestion.
The next morning, while suffer-
ing all the traditional dis-
comforts of an ordinary head
cold, I consultéd a copy of Linus
Pauling’s book, “Vitamin C and

the Common Cold.”
On Monday I took eight 500
mg tablets of ascorbic acid

(vitamin C). The following day I
repeated the dosage. By
Wednesday my cold had totally

disappeared. Previously, a nor-

mal cold for me had meant at
least a week of discomfort.

This, of course, is merely one
person's reaction to the proce-
dures recommended by Pauling.
He would consider my -dosage
extremely moderate. But it

   

ries , the Pauling Way

Linus Pauling.

does, perhaps, provide some in-
dication of the tremendous en-
thusiasm and controversy pener-
ated by the two-time Nobel
Prize winner’s latest book. It
may be less of a book than 4
kind of super-pamphlet. There
are sections that appear some.
what extraneous in a discussion
of colds, but they nevertheless
make interesting reading.

Why has this particular vol-
ume generated so much public

reaction? The literature is ce-
plete with previous studies on
vitamin C and its potential as 4
cold cure. It is this literature,
coupled with the experiences 9}
Pauling and his wife in using as-
corbic acid as a preventative
GPPLE LPL IPL POLO LOLOL DDL A DOO OD:

Reviewer Noren, a University of
California graduate in chemicsi
engineering, is president of Noren
Products, Redwood City manufac.
turing company.

PPODF PD LDA LE OPE PDI DE PPPPPPODD

and cure, that form the body of
the book.

Pauling’s celebrity status ai-
tracted a good amount of reader
recognition, In addition, he was
astute enough to develop pre-
vious findings more cogently
than the original investigators
themselves were able to do. He
assembled existing literature
that supported his viewpoint on
vitamin C, and has presented it
in a manner easily com
prehensible to the layman.

At the same time, he points to
the case of a physician who sub-
mitted a report on ascorbic acid
treatment to 11 professional
journals without acceptance.
One editor told him it would be
harmful to print the ascorbic
acid data because medical jour-
nals depend heavily on the ad-
vertising of cold remedy maau-
facturers.

There is much additional wort
to be done on the ascorbic acid
controversy, but Pauling has
correctly declined to take pact
in it because he already has 2
viewpoint. If I had to make a
judgment at this time, I’d puess
that in the course of a wide sta-
tistical sample, vitamin C would
prove beneficial as a cold fight-
er ~~ even if it were not effective
in some individual cases.