When the plague is raging, we’re quick to search out the guilty party. But who is responsible for the flu that makes life unpleasant for Poles every season? An archive issue of “Przekrój” might hold the answer.
One day in Warsaw, when the temperature had stayed stable for a good six hours – at least, according to certain thermometers – newspapers reported that 500 people had come down with the flu. Ruda was one of them.
Here is Ruda’s report on her experience, interspersed with a series of complaints about Aura –otherwise known as the weather:
Aura is to blame for everything – and that’s nothing new; Aura has been responsible for a huge number of human plagues, not to mention animal, plant and even mineral plagues from the dawn of time. Full stop.
Aura is changeable, that much is known. But this winter, her changeability surpassed all expectations, predictions and prophesies, for Aura, bored by the fact that conversation about her had begun to dwindle, decided to change every few hours. This, of course, provoked a wave of new rumours about her, much to Aura’s delight.
She’d have been even happier were it not for the fact that radio and TV presenters, when predicting her behaviour for the following day, usually use the clichéd phrase “temperature largely stable”, which drives her to paroxysms of frenzy and brings about ever more rapid and sudden changes. For this reason, I’d like to suggest that those in charge have this phrase banned.
As a result of the ups and downs we were gifted by Aura, I woke one Monday morning with a scratching in my throat. After putting in a number of phone calls to friends who were suffering from the flu, I quickly began intensive treatment. I took large quantities of vitamin C, gargled with salt water, chamomile and boric acid on rotation, drank tea with raspberry juice, with cognac, with rum, with lemon, took aspirin, Influmin, flu tablets and powders.
The next day, the scratching had ceased and the runny nose began. I called my friends who were suffering from a cold and, based on their advice, I went to bed, took measures to induce sweating, and put Rhinazine drops in my nose and eyes.
The next day I had a temperature. I called my friends, took an aspirin and a multivitamin, drank water with lemon, ate kogel mogel [similar to eggnog – trans. note], sniffed grated horseradish, took some homoeopathic drops, and slept in woollen men’s socks.
The next day the cough started. I called my friends who were suffering from a cough and… I drank comfrey syrup, milk with butter and honey (which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy), took codeine, aspirin, quinine, gargled with iodine, lemon and Antistine, made myself blow bubbles, lay in bed, cursed, read The Forsyte Saga, Rodzina Połaniecki [The Połaniecki Family] and Buddenbrooks. Nothing helped.
The next day I had a frog in my throat. Crazy, deep, absolute hoarseness. I couldn’t make any calls. I decided to nurse myself using my copy of Health Encyclopaedia. I made a drying compress for my neck and tried to sing opera arias – first Verdi, then Leoncavallo, and finally Mozart. I ate more kogel mogel, drank more milk with honey and butter, tea with lemon, and so on.
This lasted an entire 10 days, during which Aura seethed outside my window trying to get in. The thermometer jumped like crazy, one minute the sun was shining, then the wind was raging, there was snow, rain and frost, then came the thaw, and I could do nothing but sit within my four walls with my radio, television, books and medicaments for company.
After 10 days it got better. I had gained two kilos and ruined my digestive tract.
Conclusion: give Aura compliments and pay her attention so she doesn’t feel neglected and unloved. Maybe then she’ll calm down. Don’t try to heal yourself with fattening home remedies based on milk, honey, alcohol, sugar and egg yolk. Compresses are lousy. Flu relief powders mess up your stomach. The Forsyte Saga was the best read. Mozart worked best for singing. Wielokropka [a satirical news show – trans. note] made decent viewing. Despite numerous assurances to the contrary, there’s a scarcity of good music on the radio, with a predominance of Chopin. The runny nose lasts two weeks. If you can, call a doctor.
P.S. It’s all over. At the last moment I discover I should have been soaking my feet in a bucket of hot salty water. Too late now.
P.P.S. I find out at the very last minute that these private deliberations of mine actually have some scientific grounding. Dr Albert Kapikian from the Institute of Infectious and Allergic Diseases in the US has announced that, despite strenuous efforts and research, there is absolutely no remedy to fight influenza infections specifically, or colds in general. According to the results of the Institute’s many years of research, such infections last from four to 10 days (10 for me), are caused by a huge number of different viruses, and are responsible for 30-50% of all absences from work and 60-80% of primary and middle school absences. In other words, half of all cases of illness at the national level are diseases of the throat, ear and nose.
Recent studies have shown that cold viruses work in multiple shifts, changing guard three times a year. Now, for example, we’re facing a virus that will be active more or less until the end of the month. Then it will disappear without a trace, the number of cases will decrease, and then somewhere towards the end of March or the beginning of April we’ll see a new round of sneezing and coughing, but this time it will be caused by a completely different virus that will run wild until the spring weather sets in for good. Only at the start of November does the third cold variant arrive, made up of a different type of virus.
That’s why it’s so difficult to build resistance to colds and flu. You’ll be immune to one strain, then the second one nabs you a few weeks later, and that’s how it goes. And until scholars have caught every virus red-handed and come up with a vaccine that covers every strain, we will continue to cough, sneeze, and… soak our feet in buckets.
Text from the archives, no. 1141/1967.
Translated from the Polish by Kate Webster
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