In my judgment, what is understood in these days by the word “humbug,” has gained such ascendancy over common sense, that honorable people, who disdain to practice it, are so out-distanced by the many who do, that they lose thereby several of the chances of trade. This “popular pet humbug” is, therefore, largely dealt in by puffing advertisers (even in these articles) who perpetually issue illustrated catalogues, &c., under the word “patent,” _where none exists_, “Improved Hydrostatic Water Mattresses,” “Inventor” and “sole manufacturer,” and a host of other fanciful and attractive names, through our Post Office, to the whole medical profession in the United Kingdom, as well as to the staff of medical men connected with all the Hospitals, Poor Law Union Infirmaries, East India and other companies, &c., and these mattresses are now in use at most of such establishments; and if the retail prices were not highly extortionate, and altogether beyond all reasonable limit, I would not throw the “sunshine” upon this valuable medical appliance. It just strikes my memory that there is a quiet notification in the interior of the envelopes of these circulars, that a discount of 12½ per cent. is allowed to the “profession,” (but which some refuse.) I may as well add, that these dealers, of course, have _no exclusive right_ to the above names, as they would lead the public to infer, _the manufacture being as free as the air we breathe_; and of “hydrostatics,” they understand about as much as they do about general “chemistry,” and I am quite sure that of the latter exquisite science they know only just as much as the letterer can actually embody and make inherent in the words he may be instructed to paint on the door posts or facia outside. It is a melancholy truth, that this lettering is now accepted as proof that the “professor” _inside_, is in fact, a “practical” or “operative chemist,” though he may live and keep shop at the west end of the metropolis, and exhibit a framed notification, that he is a member of the “Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain,” but without examination. It is incredible, moreover, how these people, by their presumption, even seem to deceive medical practitioners, judging from the numerous “good names” they append to some of their valueless compounds of _exhausted roots_. In many cases beyond the capacity of informing an enquirer why, in “camphorated spirit” the addition of “water” precipitates free camphor, (to use a figure) they know no more of chemistry than the writer’s “foot;” and yet if one had not daily experience and proof that true science is modest and retiring, one would be liable to put these “professors” down as real living “Faradays,” “Herapaths,” “Redwoods,” and other equally illustrious chemists instead of quacks. Excuse the digression, but these characters who disgrace an intellectual science, will cross one’s mind in writing.