Talk:How the Poor Die

Background
The article states that, while riding a motorcycle, Orwell "became soaked and caught a chill which developed into pneumonia." Is this even a possible etiology for pneumonia? The Wikipedia article on pneuomonia, which cites bacteria and viruses as the leading causes, lends no support to such an assertion. Perhaps Orwell or others believed that his chill caused of his pneumonia, consistent with what sounds like folk medicine of the time. If so, the article should be edited to reflect that, rather than asserting the chill as the actual cause. Ken Kukec (talk) 04:14, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I came here to comment on the same issue. There is actually no such illness as "a chill." It's just an old-fashioned euphemism for the common cold. A cold can make you more susceptible to pneumonia, but a cold is itself a viral infectious disease - not caught from being cold, as previously thought. In all likelihood, when Orwell developed pneumonia, the doctors asked him if he'd "caught a chill" recently, he recalled being caught in the rain, and they wrongly attributed it to that. There's no excuse for uncritically relating that information in this article though, so if nobody objects I'll change it.Sadiemonster (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2015 (UTC)