For decades, researchers in the U.K. countryside purposely infected thousands with the common cold in search of answers
Over more than four decades, some 18,000 volunteers were sequestered for 10-day stints in a hilltop cluster of repurposed barracks and prefabricated huts at the edge of the English city of Salisbury, near Stonehenge.They were guests of the British medical establishment—all expenses paid. Their job: to catch a cold in the countryside.The idea was that by intentionally infecting healthy people with the common cold— a usually mild ailment—scientists might unlock clues to prevention or a cure.
Intake-day presentations summarized to new volunteers the rules of isolation and what to expect from experiments.Volunteers agreed to regular doctor visits, nasal swabs, urine tests and other diagnostics.Researchers exposed volunteers to viruses through droplets in the nose, a procedure that continues in some modern-day trials.Frank Rust/Daily Mail/Shutterstock
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