Medicine: To Suckling Hamsters

Man shares most of his diseases with lower forms of life, but for a long time it seemed that the commonest of his ills, the common cold, was his and his alone. Then researchers found that chimpanzees, most manlike of the apes, could catch man's colds. However, this did little to advance research because chimps are scarce, expensive ($500 each) and temperamental.

Last week five University of Maryland researchers reported that they had broken through the mucosal barrier and succeeded in giving colds to a common, cheap and docile laboratory animal: the suckling hamster. The researchers took nasal washings from colleagues with fresh colds, dropped them into the noses of six-day-old hamsters. Two-thirds of the infant animals got human-type colds. Cold researchers rejoiced, hoped now to make faster progress against humanity's stubborn medical nuisance by giving hundreds of hamsters runny noses.