First, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced he wasn't feeling well, and would have to take a break. Then, on Tuesday night, more than 200 first-years started to vomit. On Wednesday, the weather turned freezing and it started to snow. The cold and flu season promises to be brutal.

What did we do to deserve all this?

So far no one knows. "Diagnostic tests" are being performed on Rudenstine as he rests inside his home on Elmwood Ave. Water, food, bloods and stool tests performed on victims of the Tuesday epidemic have yet to pinpoint a cause for they're ill nesses. Not even Harvard's scientists have devised a cure for the common cold.

By the end of this week, most of Harvard seemed to be feeling a little bit better. The last two students suffering from the nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration of Tuesday night left the University Health Services' (UHS) Stillman Infirmary yesterday. And Rudenstine was feeling well enough to attend a Christmas party for Massachusetts Hall staff yesterday.

But it may be a little while before everything's back to normal. Rudenstine will apparently stay out of work for a couple more weeks. There are no guarantees that whatever caused the vomiting epidemic is gone. Factor in the heavy amount of work that piles up before winter break, and the campus mood seems a little bleak.

"Everyone's down because we have so much work," says Ethan G. Russell '98.

Even if everyone starts to feel better next week, there's a worse plague not far off. Finals.

Hundreds Fall Ill

UHS is an infirmary, but by late Tuesday night, it looked more like a morgue. Nearly 200 students descended on the health service, but by the time they got there, many were too sick to move.

In the UHS lobby, students slumped on couches or on the floor with pink plastic basins placed next to them to catch their vomit. As a nurse moved from one body to the next, a student stumbled in from the waiting room and crumpled to the carpet clutching his own bowl next to him.

If you couldn't get down to the health service to watch the action, that was okay. Pictures of the scene were broadcast nationally. Asked how he felt, one sick first-year said: "Like shit."

Harvard's estimate of the epidemic's effect was limited to the students who came to UHS. Many more students, however, say they were either turned away or did not approach the health service.

"I though I would be more comfortable puking in my room," Matthew F. Lima '98 said yesterday.

The illness lasted no more than 24 hours in most. The more than 150 students who descended on UHS Tuesday night through Wednesday morning dwindled to 33 by the end of Wednesday. The number was down to three by Thursday night, today. Most who experienced symptoms feel completely recovered, University officials said.

Some recovered students spent yesterday sharing sickness stories with their roommates over French-fries in the Union. Josh Z. Yguado '98 joked: "I was hosing down the hallway."

Lima, who describes himself as being "deathly ill for six hours Tuesday night," said that now he is only "sleeping a lot."