That the lives of many persons with serious infectious diseases have been saved by such modern-day drugs as penicillin is well known. But for some persons these medicines are a two-edged sword, since they may also cause harmful side effects, even death.

In 1943 the first antibiotic, penicillin G, was marketed in the United States. Since then, antibiotics have become the most commonly prescribed class of drugs, with at least 8,000,000,000 doses being certified for use in 1972 by the Food and Drug Administration!