History of Colloidal Silver and Antibiotics

From the pamphlet, Colloidal Silver, published by the Association for the Advanced Colloid Research

"In 1843, Seimi became the first person to systematically investigate colloids. In 1857, the great English chemist, Michael Faraday produced Colloidal Gold, a sample of which can still be seen in a London museum. In 1884, the German obstetrician F. Crede administered 1% silver nitrate to the eyes of newborn infants, virtually eliminating the incidence of disease causing blindness in newborn babies. However, it was not until the late 1800's that Western scientists were able to prove what had been known in Eastern medicine for thousands of years...that silver was a proven germ fighter. Once the discovery was made that the body's chief fluids were colloidal in nature, the endless possibilities which could occur from the use of colloids in medicine were recognized. As a result, a silver solution known as Colloidal Silver became widely used in medicine as one of the main-stays of anti microbial treatment. Throughout the early 1900's, Colloidal Silver rapidly gained recognition as one of the best infection preventive agents, but unfortunately its use was short lived. The high cost of silver combined with the fact that silver solutions could not be patented, motivated the drug companies to develop more profitable and more potent infection fighting drugs. Silver was put on the back burner while the powerful new antibiotic drugs became the choice of medical treatment."

It appears to me that greed, once again, was the motivating force in the widespread use of antibiotics, not any superior anti-microbial effect.