Silvers antimicrobial properties are probably one of the biggest future uses of this metal, it is already used in some wound dressings and creams and there is suggestions that silver could be used to increase the effectiveness of existing antibiotics by helping them penetrate the microbes outer coating.

"Silver is a very powerful natural antibiotic.It has been used for thousands of years in its less effective solid form but in more recent decades it has been used in its' colloidal form...with no side effects. It is a catalyst, disabling the particular enzyme that all one-celled bacteria, fungi and virus, use for their oxygen metabolism which means they suffocate or starve. Many others are destroyed because the electric charge on the silver particles cause their internal protoplast to collapse, and still others are rendered unable to reproduce."
Thanks to quantumbalancing.com for the last bit.

I wonder also if my grandparents lived into their late 80s and 90s because most of the coins that they used were sterling silver at that time , food for thought i guess.