Cold thoughts

Should you take cold remedies the next time the snuffles strike? Modern medicine blindly “treats the symptoms” at our peril, argue evolutionary biologist George Williams and physician Randolph Nesse in Evolution and Healing (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, ISBN 0 460 86140 9). Fever, sneezing and vomiting, for instance, have all evolved as defences against disease-causing organisms, they argue. And drugs that counteract these responses may actually prolong the illness. “Darwinian medicine” – health and disease from an evolutionary perspective – will ultimately revolutionise medical practice and research, says this provocative and entertaining book.