It is not, however, only the poorer classes of the community who have a weakness for secret remedies and the ministration of quacks; the well-to-do and the highly-placed will often, when not very ill, take a curious pleasure in experimenting with mysterious compounds. In them it is perhaps to be traced to a hankering to break safely with orthodoxy; they scrupulously obey the law and the Church and Mrs. Grundy, but will have their fling against medicine. Usually, however, people of these classes take to some system. It used to be electricity or hypnotism or some eccentricity of diet; nowadays it is more often Christian Science. Judging from the relative number of secret remedies advertised for different complaints, it would seem that the most attractive fields for exploitation by the “patent” medicine man are afforded by those diseases which are widely prevalent, and sufficiently serious to cause considerable suffering and incapacity, inasmuch as such disorders lend themselves to sensational descriptions of the dire consequences which will follow if the one and only real and certain cure is not purchased. The estimates of cost given throughout the volume refer only to the ingredients, the prices of the various drugs being those quoted in an ordinary wholesale drug list, and take no account of the cost of bottles, boxes, wrappings and packages, very often a much more serious source of expenditure. The stamp duty levied by the Inland Revenue under an old Act of Parliament must also be taken into consideration, but, ostensibly at least, it is paid by the purchaser, for the full price of a nostrum is usually 1s. 1½d. or 2s. 9d. and so on, the extra 1½d. or 3d. representing the value of the stamp. “Store prices” have, however, invaded this, like most other fields of enterprise. CHAPTER I. CATARRH AND COLD CURES.