You know, the textbooks try to ridicule the old generations; they say that the ancients were ignoramuses who attributed epidemics to acts of G-d. But now they're smarter, they imagine; they think they’ve progressed because the scientists today know that there are bacteria. But that’s only because they don't understand how the ancients thought. Everybody in the ancient world understood that Hakadosh Baruch Hu acts through agents. Whatever the agents are, that's a different story. Did they recognize precisely what the agents were, how they worked, I can’t tell you. But they believed in agents then too; only they were looking behind the curtain at the One creating the agents, the One controlling the causes. And so you can be an up-to-date scientist and still understand that all the natural causes are agents of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
And therefore even when a man is suffering even from an ordinary cold, if he wants to live according to the great principles of Judaism, he should feel what the Torah teaches him to feel: “When a man sees misfortune coming on him, he should examine his deeds.” A cold is a messenger from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, absolutely.
Now what it’s telling you exactly, that requires thought. Maybe it’s telling you that you should wash your hands when you come in from the outside, from touching dirty doorknobs all day long; that you shouldn’t put your fingers in your mouth. Could be. But whatever it is, the Torah Jew understands that the cold is sent for the purpose of bestirring him, of awakening him to search out his ways.
