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====== The Cure for the Common Cold ======


As requested by the Hon. Hyacinth on the twenty third night of March in bequest of Baron Von Munchausen to one Lord Peter Wyndham-Smythe.  Being transcripts of some merit.

**I'd like to ask about your discovery of the cure for the common cold and the reasons why you have hidden such a cure for all these years for all we who suffer so every winter.**

An easier discovery than you might think, it wasn't the finding of the material and refining it from raw rabbit parts and the rare purified water from the ice farms of Scandinavia, but it was the matter of the principle.  I could indeed make known to the general populace the cure for the common cold, but what I wanted was the cure for the noble cold.
As you know, commoners are in large numbers, by and large.
And it matters not how many commoners get the common cold.  There numbers are never significantly lessened.  But the nobility is declining in number, and we can't have that.
It was in the quest of this, that I inadvertently discovered the cure for the common cold.

**Baron Celsius: Is this the quest that took you to Louisiana, where they were still anxiously awaiting the Eiffel Tower?**

Yes.  I was consulting with the noble doctors there who had just come over from England to treat the natives there.  A terrible cough they had developed.

**Baron Celsius: You didn't develop a cure for the native cold as well?**

No, this was from the burnoffs they had of their tobacco farms.  The cure for the native cold was discovered by one of the doctors accidentally several weekends after I had the cure for the common cold.

**Captain Sir Robert: I'm most intrigued to hear what part your pet racing vulture Arthur played in this.**

The type of rabbit skins I use for filtering the purified ice from the ice fields of Scandinavia is from a particular kind of racing rabbit - which can only be found easily with the aid of a racing vulture.
This new breed of racing vulture seems to be prone to seek out racing rabbits wherever it they can be found.  Perhaps it's a better diet they have in their upbringing which allows them to survive better than other kinds of vulture?
It was necessary for me to have a vulture with me when seeking out these rabbits to create the filters.

**Lady Floria: Are not vultures, being common animals, unlike the noble racing rabbits, terribly susceptible to the common cold themselves?  Does it not kill them?**

Yes it does, which is why I shall always mourn the loss of my pet vulture for the furtherance of science.  I dedicate my research to poor Arthur.  If only I had discovered it sooner, he would be with us, even today.

**Baronet Clive: My doctor has always insisted that the only way to receive the cure for any kind of cold was to have it trampled into you by a herd of wild elephants.  Practical for those of us with decent stamina: but beyond poor Archie.**

Archie alas would not have survived, and commoners as you know - being of the weaker chin would also not have survived trampling.  So it is not just moral and ethical grounds, but practical.  Commoners not likely to survive the cure, I felt it unnecessary to elucidate them on the cure.

While I was in Louisiana with my dead vulture and rabbit skins, there were enquiries made about a missing Eiffel Tower, but I am unsure as to why that may be the case.

Needless to say, I made my way back to merry old England and I have a treatise coming out soon on how to cure the common, noble and native colds with all due acknowledgement to the doctors involved.

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