Phillip von Hohenheim was born with quite a good name in 1493, but it wasn’t quite good enough. He adapted the fairly amazing name Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim before the less impressive Paracelsus. This was just making the point that he was as good as, or perhaps better, than Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the Roman author of De Medicina. Whether or not he was in fact better than Celsus is contentious, but he was quite an innovative doctor at the time. He has been called the father of toxicology for his dictum “All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous”. Rarely has this been illustrated so well by this parable from The Sun:
A HORRIFIED mother condemned teachers after her 14-year-old son nearly died when he overdosed — on NICOTINE GUM.
Aiden Williams was just hours from death after he chomped his way through 45 pieces of low strength Nicorette Gum — the equivalent of 180 Marlboro Lights in just 25 minutes.
Shockingly, children as young as 12 can be given up to a week’s supply of gum — 105 pieces — by school counsellors without their parents knowledge.
Today Aiden’s mum Caroline, 36, called for the gum to be banned in school after her son’s hospital overdose ordeal.
Just goes to show, you can’t be too careful, and that even the safest medications have dangers.
- Dom
November 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I don’t know if the school gave specific instructions on how many pieces of gum to chew, but what was the teen thinking when chewing through 45 pieces of gum.