Still, if people like to pay an absurdly high price for citric acid or extract of bladderwrack under other names, it would, perhaps, be churlish to object, but the case is rather different with the extract or other preparation of the thyroid gland found to be present in two of the nostrums most recently analysed. Medical men are not infrequently asked by patients for information or for their opinion with regard to some substance that has been praised in a family newspaper or other easily inspired or corrupted medium to which some authority is ascribed, and the detection of thyroid gland in two of the preparations analysed justifies a note of warning. The administration of thyroid requires to be carefully regulated, and its employment in self-medication cannot be regarded as a safe proceeding. Under these circumstances it can hardly be necessary to say that postal communication with the vendors of the medicines in question, even when accompanied by the patient’s answers to printed questions and description of his symptoms, is not only of no value, but may be a source of danger by giving a false sense of security. It is curious indeed to note that one of these secret preparations, Marmola, does not appear to be advertised to the public as a proprietary article at all, but is named as one ingredient among others in a prescription which is recommended in a paragraph apparently dictated solely by pity for suffering fat people; the chemist to whom the prescription will be taken to be compounded, however, is the recipient of advertising matter urging him to lay in a stock of the article to be in readiness for the demand. It is to be hoped that no chemist would dispense such a “prescription” without making it clear to his customer that what is supplied is a proprietary article, about the usefulness or innocuousness of which he knows nothing; otherwise the customer, who finds it named along with preparations bearing the letters “B.P.,” is likely to suppose that it is a known substance, and that the dispensing of the prescription by a chemist indicates that the mixture is a proper and safe one to take. Two of the other preparations described are evidently usually or always supplied to the public without the agency of any retailer, the vendor thus securing the whole profit, which, it will be seen, is considerable. In both these cases the attempt is clearly made to get the customer to pay at once for as large a quantity as possible, presumably because he will be less likely to do so after giving the medicines a trial. The most alluring prospects are, of course, held out in the advertisements, but when the customer has been drawn into correspondence, and especially after he has begun to send his money, a process of “hedging” begins, as will be seen from the extracts quoted from letters sent by the vendors.