Infectious Disease
Circa 1550 BCE, ancient Egypt — Ebers Papyrus
The common cold was one of the most universally experienced ailments throughout human history, puzzling healers across every civilization for millennia. Ancient physicians attributed its causes to supernatural forces, imbalances of bodily humors, and environmental conditions such as cold air and dampness. The true viral nature of the condition remained unknown until the twentieth century, when laboratory science finally overturned centuries of speculation.
Historical Narrative
Among the earliest written references to cold-like illnesses appeared in ancient Egyptian medical papyri dating to approximately 1550 BCE, where scribes described remedies of honey, herbs, and incantations intended to drive away the spirits believed responsible for respiratory afflictions. Egyptian healers regarded the nose as a gateway through which malevolent forces entered the body, and treatment rituals were designed as much to appease divine powers as to address physical suffering.
Ancient Greek physicians, particularly those working within the Hippocratic tradition around the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, reframed such illnesses within the framework of humoral theory. They proposed that an excess of phlegm — one of the four fundamental bodily humors — caused the nasal discharge and general malaise associated with cold-like conditions. The brain was thought to produce phlegm, which then dripped downward into the nasal passages, a concept that persisted for roughly two thousand years. Treatment under this paradigm involved attempts to rebalance the humors through bloodletting, purging, dietary restriction, and the application of warming foods and herbs.
Galen of Pergamon, writing in the second century CE, elaborated extensively on humoral interpretations of respiratory illnesses and his writings became foundational texts for medieval European and Islamic medicine alike. Medieval physicians inherited and reinforced the belief that cold, wet weather literally chilled the body and encouraged the overproduction of phlegm. The word "cold" itself, in reference to the illness, reflected this deeply ingrained environmental theory. Physicians of the medieval Islamic world, including Ibn Sina, whose Canon of Medicine was completed around 1025 CE, synthesized Greek humoral theory with their own clinical observations and prescribed aromatic fumigations, warm broths, and herbal preparations to combat such ailments.
During the Renaissance and early modern period, anatomists began questioning humoral orthodoxy, but colds remained poorly understood at a mechanistic level. The miasma theory — which held that "bad air" arising from rotting organic matter caused illness — provided an alternative framework that still failed to identify any specific causative agent. Physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries debated whether cold temperatures themselves caused the illness or merely weakened the body's natural defenses against some unidentified external agent.
The germ theory revolution of the nineteenth century, driven by the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, transformed medical thinking about infectious disease broadly. Researchers began searching for the specific bacterial or viral agent responsible for the common cold, initially suspecting bacteria. In 1914, the German bacteriologist Walther Kruse conducted early transmission experiments suggesting the illness was caused by a filterable agent — meaning something smaller than bacteria. This pointed toward a virus, though the tools to confirm this were not yet available.
In 1946, the British Medical Research Council established the Common Cold Research Unit at Salisbury, England, which became the world's foremost institution devoted to studying the illness. Under the direction of Sir Christopher Andrewes, researchers there conducted decades of controlled human volunteer studies, confirming the viral nature of the condition and identifying rhinoviruses as a primary cause by the 1950s. The long arc from Egyptian spirit-expulsion rituals to mid-twentieth century virology illustrated how deeply entrenched earlier theories had been and how fundamentally laboratory science reshaped the understanding of even the most familiar of human ailments.
Key Historical Figures
Historical narrative only — this page describes how Common cold was understood historically. It is not medical advice and does not describe current diagnosis or treatment. Sourced from verified medical history references (NIH, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and standard medical history texts). See our medical disclaimer.