The history of anti-rheumatic medicines is one of hope and disaster

“The hormones [ACTH and cortisone] represent an entirely new approach in the art of healing. Penicillin, streptomycin, the sulfa drugs, and most other medicines you’ve been reading about are poisons intended specifically to attack invading germs. (...) But ACTH and cortisone are not germ-killers. They are natural products, gland hormones. They influence the body’s built-in chemical factories that go into action whenever extra supplies of tissue are required.”