Then there was a woman forty-seven years old who was treated for a sore throat with penicillin. In three days she had all manner of complications, such as red lumps on her body, itching and difficulty in urinating. In spite of the use of an artificial kidney machine, she died.

An even more frequent cause of complications resulting from the use of antibiotics is allergy or some type of intolerance. Any patient may be allergic to one or more antibiotics, as a result of which harm and even death may come to the patient. For example, of more than a thousand reported life-threatening reactions caused by antibiotics, the vast majority involved penicillin, and, of these, 10 percent were fatal.

There is also the problem of microbes developing drug immunity, resisting the bacteriocidal effect of the antibiotic. This has been seen recently in the treatment of gonorrhea. For years the gonococcus germ causing this disease was extremely sensitive to penicillin so that recovery from this disease was almost certain if the antibiotic was administered. Lately, however, penicillin-resistant strains of gonococcus have developed, so that now other, less effective drugs have to be used.