The Count of Monte Cristo

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alembics and crucibles? For you must indeed be a great chemist, and the
elixir you administered to my son, which recalled him to life almost
instantaneously"--

"Oh, do not place any reliance on that, madame; one drop of that elixir
sufficed to recall life to a dying child, but three drops would have
impelled the blood into his lungs in such a way as to have produced
most violent palpitations; six would have suspended his respiration, and
caused syncope more serious than that in which he was; ten would have
destroyed him. You know, madame, how suddenly I snatched him from those
phials which he so imprudently touched?"

"Is it then so terrible a poison?"

"Oh, no. In the first place, let us agree that the word poison does
not exist, because in medicine use is made of the most violent poisons,
which become, according as they are employed, most salutary remedies."