Ephemeral patent-medicine businesses, run by charlatans, whose aim is frankly to make money before they are exposed, spring up like mushrooms; and their cunningly worded advertisements meet the eye in the columns of every paper one opens for a few months; then they drop out, to reappear under another name, at another address. These rogues buy a few gross pills from a wholesale druggist, insert a small advertisement, and so lay the foundations of a profitable business. The lure of the unknown is turned to account. "The discoverer went back to the Heart of Nature--and found many rare herbs used by Native Tribes." "The "Heart of Nature" was probably a single-room office tucked away down a Fleet Street alley, and analysis proves these medicines contain only common drugs, one "_Herbal Remedy_" being _metallic_ phosphates. A common procedure is to send a question form, and, after answering the query, "What are you suffering from?" with "Neurasthenia", the company "carefully study" this, and then inform you with a gravity that would grace the pages of "Punch", "You are the victim of a very intractable type of Neurasthenia", so intractable in fact that it will need "additional treatment"--at an "additional" fee. The quack's advertisements are models of the skilful use of suggestion, and turn to rare account the half-knowledge of physiology most men pick up from periodicals. He frightens you with alarming and untrue statements, gains your confidence by a display of semi-true facts reinforced where weak by false assertions, and, having benefited himself far more than you, leaves you to do what you should have done at first, go to a doctor or a hospital. Were it made compulsory for the recipe to be printed on all patent medicines, people would lose their childlike faith in coloured water and purges, and cease the foolish and dangerous practice of treating diseases of which they know little with drugs of which they know less. The British Medical Association of 429, Strand, London, W.C., issue two 1_s_. books--"Secret Remedies: What they cost and what they contain", "More Secret Remedies"--giving the ingredients and cost price of most patent medicines. You are strongly urged to send for these books, which should be in every home. _The basis of every cure for epilepsy_ (not obviously fraudulent) _is bromides_. The usual method is to condemn vigorously the use of potassium bromide, and substitute ammonium or sodium bromide for it. Some advertisers condemn all the bromides, and prescribe a mixture of them; others condemn potassium bromide, and shamelessly forward a pure solution of this same salt in water as a "positive cure!" In all cases the sale price is out of reasonable proportion to the cost, victims paying outrageous sums for very cheap drugs.