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Chemotherapy is a very broad term which may well include antibiotics, but in popular parlance the latter term is usually reserved for penicillin, erythromycin, and numerous others, obtained from molds, soil bacteria, and other lowly organisms.

There is no doubt that these deserve the title of wonder drugs. Nevertheless they should be handled with discretion: there are many who have found that the antibiotics are two-edged swords. Some people have penicillin or other antibiotic allergy which can be a torture, harassing the body with a red itching rash or intestinal upset. But mankind, whether holding a medical degree or just shopping over the counter, persists in ignoring the fact that any agent, powerful and active enough to do good to the diseased body, can also do harm. The antibiotics have indeed proved themselves miracle drugs, but they are not universally efficient. They will not stop the common cold and the infections which we all get from time to time and call grippe, the flu, etc.

New brooms sweep clean and these new drugs are often more efficient at first than when the infectious bacteria have become used to them. For instance, so many persons have dosed themselves with penicillin to prevent gonorrhea that a “resistant strain” of gonorrhea has developed which will not respond well to penicillin. Then there are certain bacteria and mold-like organisms which habitually dwell in our bodies without doing harm, apparently because they are held in check by the tougher bacteria which cause our usual infections. When the antibiotics have killed off the toughs then the former Caspar Milquetoasts assert themselves and may do direful things to us while we have no way to check them.

The latest and exceedingly popular drugs are the hormones. Thyroid extract was used in the eighteen-nineties. Insulin came along just after the First World War. Since these two hormones have been observed over long periods of time, their virtues and vices are, we believe, well understood. We may almost sanctify them. As to the many other hormones which have been recognized and a number of which seem to have been produced in pure form, I think that I may characterize them by an old New England expression:  ”All deacons are good, but there’s odds in deacons.”

One should be exceedingly careful in making definite statements about hormones. Cortisone was no sooner produced than it was modified. Hormones are powerful agents for good or evil. Our knowledge of them is increasing rapidly, which should, of course, make for good, but they are difficult to handle. Presumably they are going to be the drugs of the future.

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GENERAL HEALTH