Subject: Re: HERBALISM (sort of, maybe): Vodka

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 01:18:33 GMT

[email-masked] (Julie Kangas) writes:
> many people I talked to swore about drinking vodka to stop a cold.  
> The story is that as soon as you feel yourself coming down with a 
> cold, you should drink a small amount of vodka (about a medium shot 
> glass' worth) and you won't catch the cold.
> 
> Anyone else hear about alchohol being used this way?  I would think
> that in order to get a high enough concentration of alchohol in 
> your bloodstream to kill the bacteria you would pretty well do
> yourself in too...

Hold it.  A cold is viral, not bacterial, which actually has something to
do with why this (and Epsom salts, and chicken soup) work.
My highschool Chemistry teacher always told us the reason people gargled
with Epsom salts and drank salty chicken soup for colds is because the
salt concentration dehydrates and kills the surface layer of cells in your
throat by osmosis, and that's where the viruses live.  I would expect
highly-concentrated alcohol to have exactly the same effect.

Disclaimer: I'm not medically trained, nor have I even taken Chemistry
since that particular class eleven years ago.