In this connection one danger peculiar to itself deserves especial notice. Other narcotics are seldom given or sold save under their own names; and if administered in combination, in quack medicine or unexplained prescriptions, their effect betrays itself. Opium forms the basis of innumerable remedies and very effective remedies, sold under titles altogether reassuring and misleading. Nearly all soothing-syrups and powders for example—“mother’s blessings” and infant’s curses—are really opiates. These are known or suspected by most well-informed people. What is less generally known is that nine in ten of the popular remedies for catarrh, bronchitis, cough, cold and asthma are also opiates. So powerful indeed is the effect of opium upon the lining membrane of the lungs and air passages, so difficult is it to find an effective substitute, that the efficacy, at least the certain and rapid efficacy, of any specific remedy for cold whose exact nature is not known affords strong ground for suspecting the presence of opium. Many chemists are culpably, almost criminally, reckless; and not a few culpably ignorant in this matter. An experienced man bought from a fashionable West-end shop a box of cough lozenges, pleasant to the taste and relieving a severe cough with wonderful rapidity. Familiar with the influence of opium on the stomach and spirits, he was sure before he had sucked half-a-dozen of the lozenges that he had taken a dose powerful enough to affect his accustomed system, and strong enough to poison a child, and do serious harm to a sensitive adult. Yet the lozenges were sold without warning or indication of their character; few people would have taken any special precaution to keep them out of the way of children, and the box, falling into the hands of a heedless or disobedient child, might have poisoned a whole nursery.