Almost all medicines are poisons. That which saves life in one
dose causes death in another. There is no more useful medicine
in the modern pharmacopoeia than arsenic; yet three out of five
women who poison themselves do so with arsenic. Strychnine is
a terrible poison, but nux vomica is a most valuable drug.
In Greece criminals were sometimes forced to take their own
lives by drinking a cup of hellebore; we in our day cure many
diseases of the stomach with veratrum. If a drug which destroys
life under given conditions saves it in others, why may not a
disease germ which is noxious in one set of circumstances prove
beneficial when the circumstances are changed and the exhibition
of the germ regulated by scientific principles.--San Francisco
_Call_.
(2403)