Starve/feed

[Orangesauce1]

Starve a cold, feed a fever or... feed a cold starve a fever

Put me out of my sad little misery lol x

[China Doll]

Second one Orange.... about 90% certain.

[Octavius]

The feed-a-cold idea arose out of a folk understanding of the disease process, namely that there were two kinds of illnesses, those caused by low temperatures (colds and chills) and those caused by high temperatures (fever).

If you had a chill, you wanted to stoke the interior fires, so you pigged (feed a cold). If you had a fever, you didn't want things to overheat, so you slacked off on the fuel (starve the fever).

[whiffey]

Here you go, and some interesting reasoning behind it:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn17 77

[zimzam]

feed a cold and starve a fever as they say. It sems to work

[gerkin]

Makes no difference to a grown adult, got to be careful with small babies though

[jno]

feed a cold and starve a fever; but originally I think it was one piece of advice, not two: if you fed a cold you would stop it turning into a fever.

[Octavius]

Good advice, as ever, jno.

Not to be confused with starving a beaver to feed a vole.

[joko]

it is incorrect - an old wives tale

if you are ill you need to eat normally - if not more - to help your body recover

people vomit with fevers so it was thought that the body didn't like food at that time.

its garbage

[Octavius]

No, that was a rock band from the 90�s. Stupid Girl.

:o)