Your mom was right. There’s a lot to be said for chicken soup.

One of the more miserable aspects of winter, along with snow shoveling, windshield scraping, treacherous highways, and wet mittens, is the common cold. Colds, despite their name, aren’t caused by running around in damp socks or trotting out to play without your jacket. The evil geniuses behind colds are viruses—over 200 of them, including the major culprits called rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. And we don’t pick these up from unseasonable weather, but from each other.

One reason for the flurry of colds in the winter months, scientists guess, is togetherness. That is, a lot of us spend more time cooped up indoors, in company with potentially infectious people. (Though there may