may be safely administered to very young children; in another case the specific declaration is made that “the cough pills do not contain opium,” which would certainly be regarded by most people as meaning that they do not contain the active principle of opium—morphine; and yet this was found to be present. The uncertainty as to what the composition of a secret medicine may be at any particular time is illustrated by another of the articles described, which has in past years been the subject of legal proceedings in the course of which the presence of morphine was proved, but which is now found not to contain any. The number of advertised proprietary medicines for the cure of coughs is very large, and the number of those but little advertised and having principally a local sale is still larger; the latter, as a rule, have a good deal of resemblance to the advertised preparations. A selected few of the most widely advertised of this class have been examined. The information which chemical analysis can give as to the composition of proprietary medicines is necessarily limited to the recognition of those ingredients which possess more or less definite chemical properties. The makers, of course, can make use of any one or more of a long series of vegetable extracts which very much resemble each other, and of various sweetening and flavouring materials sold for the purpose. In the case of many secret preparations analysis can afford complete and positive information as to their composition; but this is not so in every case, owing to many preparations commonly used in pharmacy being devoid of definite active principles that can be identified, and possessing no characters distinguishing them from others of the same class. Many such preparations are likely to be employed in cough mixtures; and, as these medicines usually contain a large proportion of treacle, honey, extract of liquorice, decoction of linseed, or some other old-fashioned complex preparations as basis, the identification of small proportions of many substances which are likely to be present becomes practically impossible. Many of the drugs in recognised use for coughs, such as senega, Virginian prune, etc., as well as domestic remedies like horehound and coltsfoot, are practically safe from certain identification by chemical analysis for such reasons, and in some of the preparations described below such substances may perhaps be present in addition to the ingredients named. The receipts given are not put forward as necessarily representing the whole of the ingredients in the articles in question, but they probably include all those which are of any importance or possess any known curative action.