Skegness Magazine

Help the War Effort – Stop Sneezing!

Source: Skegness News 1942

POSSIBLE CURE BY A MEDICAL OFFICER
Suddenly something starts to tickle your nose . . . then right from your inmost depths you are shaken by an explosive sneeze.
Yet all this nuisance could be easily stopped by firmly pressing the fore finger just under your nose. If this does not entirely remove the temptation, aid the pressure with a few deep slow breaths. Then blow the nose, first one side, then the other to prevent one another coming on.

Always block a sneeze in this way, and not only because it is not elegant, there are more weighty reasons.

The first is that, as the Ministry of Health says, “Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases.”

Without any doubt the greatest single disease carrier in Britain is air contaminated by coughs and sneezes. Usually it’s not possible to stop a cough, but it can always be caught in a handkerchief, so that the germs are trapped and prevented from being blown about so that they can infect other people.

A NEW IDEA
Correspondents to the Lancet recently suggested another reason for not sneezing.
A doctor who had suffered greatly from common colds noticed that his colds invariably announced their arrival by sneezing. So he prevented the sneeze by pressing his upper lip in the centre, or grasping his nose firmly between the fingers so that he did not sneeze through the nose. Since adopting this simple trick he has been quite free from colds.
This was confirmed by another doctor, who added to the prescription a dose of a little bicarbonate of soda.

Admittedly this is a new idea for preventing colds, and one that has not been widely tried. But it is simple, easy and costs nothing, so is well worth trying. Remember too, that even if it fails to stop your cold it saves other people from infection. So next time you feel a sneeze coming on, block it!