The analyses here given of some of the proprietary articles which the public are induced to buy for the cure of ordinary colds and catarrh furnish a good example of the absurdity of the barefaced pretensions in which nostrum mongers indulge, for minor ailments are by no means neglected by the makers of nostrums; if the price to be obtained is somewhat lower than in the case of more serious disorders the cost price can be reduced in an equal or greater proportion. Alarming accounts, too, of the evils to be expected if resort be not had to the advertised articles are not wanting. Thus, in the advertisement of one of the articles described below, it is stated that catarrh “invariably creates biliousness, constipation, pleurisy, asthma, bronchitis, catarrhal fever, and consumption”; also that “it is estimated that over 20,000 people died in the United Kingdom last year of consumption caused by catarrh.” The remedy put forward for this malignant disease is shown by analysis to consist of a solution of a pinch of common salt with a trace of carbolic acid, the actual cost of the quantity sold for a shilling being one-thirtieth part of a farthing. The probability that many people would regard a slight cold in the head as not requiring a resort to a “specialist in chronic disease in every form” such as the proprietor of this preparation, is turned to account by a disparaging reference to the medical profession. “Catarrh,” we are told, “in its chronic form (and the complaints arising from it) is a malady which has not, up to the present time, received that attention and research from the medical faculty which it deserves. Most practitioners have given it merely a passing thought, or poohed at it as a mere cold which would soon pass off, and perhaps give some light tonic to tone up the stomach.” Another of the “remedies” described well illustrates the way in which the public is deluded by such “specialists”; camphor, quinine and ipecacuanha are frequently employed as domestic remedies in the early stages of a cold in the head, and persons who believe in their usefulness can no doubt be induced to buy a “cold cure” which professes to contain them in combination with other drugs, presented in a form convenient and agreeable to be taken; but in the tablets which are represented as consisting of cascara, bromide, quinine, ipecacuanha, camphor and bryonia, analysis did not reveal any appreciable traces of cascara, bromide, quinine, ipecacuanha, or camphor. The principal ingredients actually present were cinchonine, an alkaloid found in the bark from which quinine is prepared but cheaper than quinine, and acetanilide, a chemical better known under the name antifebrin, both in very small doses.