Victims who have seizures with some regularity at a certain time, should take the three doses in one, two hours before the attack is expected. If there are long intervals between attacks, cease taking bromides after one fit and recommence three weeks before the next seizure is apprehended. When there is an interval of six months or more between attacks, take no drugs. Bromides in solution are unpalatable, patients grow careless of regularity and dosage. You must learn from your doctor and your own experience the prescription, time and dose best suited to your case, and then _never miss a dose until you have been free from fits for two years_, for the beneficial action of bromide depends on the tissues becoming and remaining "saturated" with the drug. Never give up bromides suddenly after long use, but gradually reduce the dose. It is just when the disease has been brought under control, that patients consider further doctor's bills an unnecessary expense, with the result that a little later the fits recur, and a tedious treatment has to be commenced over again. No value can be placed on any specific for epilepsy until it has been thoroughly tested for some years, and so proved that its effects are permanent, for almost any treatment is of value for a time, possibly through the agency of suggestion. * * * * * CHAPTER XX PATENT MEDICINES "Men who prescribe purifications and spells and other illiberal practices of like kind."--Hippocrates. "...Corrupted By spell and medicines bought of mountebanks." "Othello." Act I. Carlyle said the world consisted of "so many million people, _mostly fools_"; and he was right, for to public credulity alone is due the immense growth of the patent-medicine trade. It was formerly thought that for each disease, a specific drug could be found, but this idea is exploded. The doctor determines the exact condition of his patient, considers how he best may assist nature or prevent death, and selects suitable drugs. He carefully notes their action and modifies his treatment as required. The use of set prescriptions for set diseases is obsolete; the doctor of to-day treats the patient, not the disease. A few patent medicines are of limited value; many are made up from prescriptions culled from medical works, and the rest are frauds, like potato starch. The evil lies in charging from three to four hundred times a just price, in ascribing to a medicine which may be good for a certain disorder, a "cure-all" virtue it does not possess, and in inducing ignorant people to take powerful drugs, reckless of results.