The only way in which this imposition, so constantly practised upon the community, can be guarded against effectually, is to oblige every one who sells a medicine, to make the composition of it known on the wrapper in which each parcel of the medicine is enclosed. Such a law is now, I understand, in force in the State of Maine. I hope that the law will be sustained, and that so just and noble an example will everywhere be followed. If it be objected that the inventor in medicine should, like other inventors, have something more as a reward than the consciousness of doing good, and the reputation which his invention gives him, this can be provided for without any difficulty. Let a board be constituted, whose duty it shall be to examine all medicines offered to them, rejecting all that have nothing new in material or in the form of combination, and recommending all that are really valuable. Let it also be the duty of this board to award to the proprietor of every medicine, which they approve, as being a real invention or discovery, a suitable sum to be paid him out of the public treasury. Such a board, constituted on the most liberal principles that any one could desire, would find but few among the multitude of remedies now before the public, of which they could conscientiously approve; and there would be no ground for fear of any great drain upon the public treasury, by the awards which they would make to inventors. Quackery has, at length, come to be so monstrous an evil, that there will be great difficulty in removing it. The credulity of the public is so great and so extensive, that the plainest and strongest facts, brought out even in multitudinous array, are almost powerless before it. Then, too, the capital invested in this vast system of imposture is large in amount. It has become one of the great interests in the community,[10] and is so linked in with other interests in the relations of business, as to have a strong hold in this way upon the public. It has even subsidized the press; and it has done it so thoroughly, that it has not only muzzled it, so far as speaking out the truth on this subject is concerned, but it has compelled it to utter freely the falsehoods which it demands for its purposes. I speak of our secular newspapers. If there are any that are not guilty, they are exceptions. There may be a few. I know of not one. Not content with advertising quack medicines, they, for a liberal fee, admit into their columns, articles which have the appearance of editorial recommendations; and these are copied as such into advertisements in other newspapers. And besides all this, respectable editors have often refused to publish any exposure of the impositions of quackery. Our legislators, too, are afraid to move in any way against a system of impostures which has so strong a hold upon the community. Still, though these formidable obstacles are in the way of a radical reform on this subject, let the facts continue to be