Saliem Fakir looks beyond Western medicine to the former Soviet Union for the ultimate weapon in germ warfare.

THE STORY OF HOW PAUL Kruger lost his thumb goes back to when his four-pounder elephant gun blew up in his hand during a hunting expedition. The injury forced the 20-year-old Kruger to clean his hand with turpentine and cut out the remainder of his thumb with a jack knife. Gangrene set in, however, and Kruger treated it with an old Boer remedy, dipping his hand into the warm stomach of a goat. The rumins of goats, sheep or cows contain a swamp of bacteria and so too anti-bacterial viruses that feed on their bacterial hosts. His hand healed in six months.