Some forms of medical treatment are not normally used because they are liable to be as dangerous in effect as the diseases themselves. But when a patient’s condition is so grave that his life is almost despaired of, there is no alternative but to take a fifty-fifty chance and use one of those desperate remedies.
In the same way, if a man finds himself in a desperate position, he must take desperate steps to get out of it. For example, should a gambler be deeply in debt, he may rob his employers of a thousands pounds, giving as his excuse when charged with the embezzlement, ‘I couldn’t help myself. Desperate diseases must have desperate remedies.’