Amber is a fossil vegetable resin which has undergone change owing to chemical action. The name is derived from the Arabic word AMBAR. Amber is also known as Succinum (a word derived from the Greek Succum, juice) on account of its vegetable origin. At one time it was also known by the Oriental word Karabe, straw-attractor. Hash-mal was its name in Hebrew and by the Greeks it was known as ELEKTRON, from which our word electricity has been derived. That painstaking scholar of the 17th century, Dr. Philemon Holland, thus translates from the 37th Book of Pliny: “To come into the properties that amber hath; if it bee well rubbed and chaufed between the fingers, the potentiall faculty that hath within is set on work and brought into actuall operation whereby you shall see it to draw chaffe, strawes, drie leaves, yea and thin rinds of the Linden or Tillet tree after the same sort as the loadstone draweth yron.” According to Callistratus it is good as a preventative of delirium, and as a cure for strangury if taken in drink or attached as an amulet to the body. This last author gives the name CHRYSELECTRUM to an amber of golden colour which presents most beautiful tints in the morning, attracts flame with the greatest rapidity, igniting the moment it approaches fire. Worn upon the neck, he says, it is a cure for fever and other diseases, “and the powder of it either taken by itself or with gum mastick in water is remedial for disease of the stomach.” The writer has had strong evidence of the efficacy of amber in the cure of asthma, hay fever, croup and various diseases of the throat, and knows a number of medical practitioners who are convinced of its beneficial action. A well-known chemist also assured him that his wife had suffered from asthma all her life until five years ago, when she expressed a desire to wear a string of amber; since wearing this she has not experienced the slightest symptom of her former trouble. The writer has an amber necklet, the beads of which are mud-coloured and cracked after having been worn for a few months by a lady suffering from hay fever. There is no doubt of its curative influence, no doubt that ancient observation was correct, and the statement in some modern medical text books that amber has “absolutely no curative value” is difficult indeed to follow. It is remarkable that distilled amber yielding a pungent, acrid but not unpleasant oil, known as Oil of Amber or Oil of Succinite, is recognized as a potent ingredient in various embrocations. It is, therefore, hard to reconcile the statements that while amber has “absolutely no curative value,” Oil of Amber has. Mr. C. W. King says: “Repeated experiments have proved beyond doubt that the wearing of an amber necklace has been known to prevent attacks of erysipelas in a person subject to them.” He also writes of its efficacy “as a defender of the throat against chills.”