From R H FOWLER
Ariadne, whose weekly montage of quizzical gleanings affords me much
joy, has drawn attention to the unfamiliar word ‘hormesis’, tagged to the
dubious hypothesis that a little bit of ionising radiation is good for us
(1 September). Hormesis seems to be a new word, but the notion is not. I
am old enough to remember, from the 1920s, a sales pitch on bottled spa
water labels: ‘contains radium’.
R H Fowler Ashburton Victoria, Australia
