Transcriber’s notes: In this transcription, paired =equals= symbols indicate =bold text= and paired _underscores_ denote _italicised text_. A single underscore followed by paired curly brackets indicates that the enclosed characters are subscripted, e.g. in the chemical formula C_{3}H_{8}O_{3}. Footnotes are located below the relevant paragraphs. The text contains uncommon characters that will not necessarily display correctly with all viewing devices. If some of the characters look abnormal, first ensure that the device’s character encoding is set to Unicode (UTF-8). The default font might also need to be changed to a Unicode font such as Arial Unicode MS, DejaVu, Segoe UI Symbol or FreeSerif. The book contains quotations, comments and reports relating to debates between medical authorities and pharmaceutical suppliers, and the text is formatted in such a way (in both the original and in this transcription) as to help readers differentiate the parties to the debates. In this plain-text transcription, wording originating from pharmaceutical sources is displayed with greater indentation, while that from medical authorities has lesser indentation; however, this pattern is not entirely consistent. Inconsistent use of opening and closing quotation marks is as in the original. There are numerous hyphenation and spelling inconsistencies, the most noticeable perhaps being the inclusion or omission of a final ‘e’ from chemical terms such as oxid/oxide. These remain as in the original. A representative list of the inconsistencies is appended at the end of the transcription together with a list of the spelling errors that have been corrected silently. Inconsistent formatting of fractions, e.g. 1-4 cf. 1/4 is as in the original. The text contains various words, phrases and comments enclosed by square brackets. These were inserted by the authors. A few omissions noted by the transcriber have been inserted within curly brackets to help differentiate them – hence {of} {a} {be} {“}. A missing full stop and a missing parenthesis have each been inserted silently; redundant duplicated punctuation (. ,) has been deleted silently; and on page 299 a duplicated phrase has been deleted silently, viz. this dread disease is no longer a matter of doubt." Several large landscape-format tables have been modified in this transcription to fit narrower viewing screens and ‘key’s added to identify the column headings. A mathematical error in Table 2 on page 390 is as in the original – Rat 4 average weight gain/loss should be 2.1 not 2.7. Table 11 on page 444 contains a footnote cross-reference to Tables 8 and 10 but these do not exist. THE PROPAGANDA FOR REFORM --IN-- Proprietary Medicines Part I. Council Reports Part II. Laboratory Contributions Part III. Contributions from the Journal: Nostrums