I can think of at least one example (Ella Enchanted) where someone actually dies of a cold (at least, what's described as a cold.) Two, actually, since I'm pretty sure it can happen in Oregon Trail II.
Should this trope be mentioned in works Older Than Radio if the epidemiology of the cold was not known then?
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I don't see why not?
It was still a trope, even though we didn't have the scientific knowledge to determine it was an erroneous trope.
We don't have to be mean. Remember - no matter where you go, there you are. —Buckaroo Banzai
I've cut the "modern use"/"flipside" because having two tropes as different as "Hypothermia" and "Catching a cold because you didn't button up your coat" mashed into the same page is a very bad idea. The examples are here, awaiting a proper page for them.
Modern Style: Getting Cold Means Realistic Ailments
- In both The Saint and in The Day After Tomorrow the girls are bright science types who know that hypothermia is the real deadly danger coming from exposure to freezing cold water.
- Stephen King film The Shining resulted in the main character freezing to death from overexposure to cold. Now that's realistic.
- The Hollows by Kim Harrison. Rachel falls into a frozen river in one of the books but does not come down with a cold. She does react like a person who fell into a frozen river otherwise would.
- Weather Wardens: Joanne's concerns from being in frozen temperatures are frostbite and hypothermia.
- Batman The Animated Series: Except on his first appearance, dealing with being frozen by Mr. Freeze leaves people shivering but not coming down with colds.
- in The Batman this is also true.
- In My Life As A Teenage Robot: after being frozen in a gelatin monster, the kids all shiver and need blankets but no one begins sneezing.
There was a Warner Brothers cartoon called Odor of the Day (1948), in which a dog is chased out of the house by a skunk's smell, but this gives him a stuft nose which then makes him imune to the skunk.