Never temporize if there is any suspicion of the existence of such diseases as consumption or cancer. Self-treatment with patent medicines in such cases is worse than useless--it is actually dangerous to life itself. Consult a physician at the earliest possible moment, and put no faith in patent medicines. There are, however, as has been pointed out, certain patent and proprietary medicines which may properly be employed by the physician. These include the newly discovered, manufactured chemicals of known composition and action; and single substances or combinations of known drugs in known proportions, which can only be made to best advantage by those having the adequate facilities. The habit of prescribing proprietary mixtures of several substances for special diseases is, however, generally a matter of laziness, carelessness, or ignorance on the doctor's part. This follows because no disease is alike in any two patients; because any one disease has many phases and stages; and because a doctor should always treat the patient and not the disease. Thus a doctor, after carefully questioning and examining the patient, should adjust the remedy to the peculiarities of the patient and disease. It is impossible to make a given combination of drugs fit all patients with the same disease. The quantity of patent medicine sold in the United States is enormous. A series of articles by Samuel Hopkins Adams appeared in _Collier's Weekly_ during 1905 and 1906, in which he not only showed the fraudulent character of many of the best-known patent medicines, giving their names and most minute details concerning them, but furnished much reliable information in an interesting and convincing manner. In the course of these articles he pointed out that about one hundred millions of dollars are paid annually for patent medicines in the United States. As explaining this, in part, he affirmed that as many as five companies each expended over one million dollars annually in advertising patent medicines. _What Are the Good Ones Good For?_--In any great movement, when a dormant public suddenly awakens to the fact that a fraud has been perpetrated or a wrong committed, the instinctive and overwhelming desire is for far-reaching reform. In efforts to obtain needed and radical improvement, and with the impetus of a sense of wrong dealing, the pendulum of public opinion is apt to swing too far in an opposite direction. There are bad patent medicines--the proof of their fraudulent character is clear and overwhelming; but there are good ones whose merits have been obscured by the cloud of wholesale and popular condemnation. It is true that the manufacturers of even some of the valuable ones have an absurd habit of claiming the impossible. This attitude is to be regretted, for the makers have thus often caused us to lose faith in the really helpful uses to which their products might be put.