kill or cure

Idioms  

1. Either remedy a disease or kill the patient, as in The copy chief did not like her headline for the drug, “Kill or Cure.” This expression dates from the mid-1700s, when it was already being used half-jokingly.

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Example Sentences

Now, a local industry that has long operated in a near legal vacuum is facing an onslaught of legislative and regulatory initiatives that could amount to a "kill or cure" treatment.

From Reuters • Oct. 4, 2011

It is either going to kill or cure me.

From Time Magazine Archive

Television was promising either to kill or cure the sports world.

From Time Magazine Archive

The work was kill or cure out there.

From Hunted and Harried by Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael)

The best of his luck, the poet thinks, was the "Rough but wholesome shock, An accident which comes to kill or cure, A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"

From Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher by Jones, Henry, Sir