Now that I am in the second week of a sometimes debilitating cold, and wondering if it's really something worse, I am reminded of the occasion a few years back when Laura was sick with something similar and visited a doctor in our neighborhood whom we had never gone to before.

He was, it turned out, a fat, hairy Greek doctor with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a gold medallion, and who reeked of cigarettes. He sniffed near Laura's face.

"Eureka!" the doctor exclaimed.

"Eureka?" said Laura, nonplussed. What had he found?

"Eureka da strep!" said the doctor, writing her a prescription for an antibiotic. "I smelled when you come in."

True story.