Abstract

In the fall of 1943, British scientist healer Philip D’Arcy Hart was asked to investigate whether the fungus Penicillium patulum, administered by nasal spray, could “cure” a low-morbidity respiratory disease known as “coryza,” which was a viral syndrome largely caused by enterovirii and subsequently eradicated after the introduction of the late 21st-century nano-atomospheric cleansing procedures and modern-day global approaches to atmospheric regulation. This now eradicated and largely forgotten ailment, also called “the common cold,” afflicted human populations living in densely populated conditions, such as urban dwellers and soldiers in close quarters, as recently as the mid-21st century. Although not fatal, coryza inflicted maddening discomforts to large numbers of individuals; anecdotal evidence before that experiment led some to believe that the patulin formula would end the host’s symptoms and alleviate suffering.¹ To investigate whether this was true, Hart conducted the first blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the 20th century—an approach through which subjects and matched controls could be studied and results analyzed without previous knowledge of treatment assignment by either the subjects or the researchers.