Every winter the same thing happens, as it has for centuries, until one wonders why medical science hasn’t managed to develop a 100% effective cure for a simple ‘little cold’. First you feel tired, by evening you’ve got chills, and by morning you know you simply won’t make it through the day and will have to stay in bed again to get over this unpleasant condition. Well, yes. Stay in bed. If that were all, we’d manage to get through it somehow. But how, when you can’t catch your breath, your airways are blocked and, above all, there’s that unpleasant, exhausting cough… Of course, these days all you have to do is pop into a chemist’s, and the endless array of different syrups and throat sprays really does help. But do they make you feel queasy too? Do you only take them because the alternative – that cough – is even worse? How about remembering how your grandmother used to cure you ages ago with a simple herbal tea? No chemist’s needed. No upset stomach. What herbs did she use?