This is a fair sample of nostrums and of the methods of exploiting them. The bitterly humiliating fact about the whole business is that a preparation, advertised under such palpably misleading claims, could actually be advertised in medical journals, even in journals of a supposedly high scientific standard, and could be bought and prescribed for years by supposedly intelligent and conscientious physicians. It is not supposed that every physician should be enough of a chemist to detect the ridiculous discrepancies between the published formula and the therapeutic claims made for such a mixture. But that members of a supposedly learned profession should fail to have enough interest in the preparations they prescribe for their confiding patients to find out that acetanilid is being masked under an obsolete and little used name, that under an imposing polysyllabic designation is hidden saccharin, that the so-called “active principle Process-Laborde” (whatever that may be), is equivalent only to one-third grain of salicylic acid in a 5-grain tablet, and that the advertising matter sent out for years by this company contained absolute falsehoods regarding the composition and therapeutic benefits of its preparation, is certainly just cause for shame and humiliation. If a physician, knowing the composition of Labordine, wishes to prescribe it and prescribes it intelligently, he has a perfect right to do so. If he wishes his patient to have 2 grains of acetanilid, 1/20 of a grain of quinin, and 1/3 of a grain of salicylic acid, and considers a mixture of ground celery seed, starch and milk sugar as a proper vehicle for this medication, no one will question his right to administer it. No physician, however, has any right, either moral or professional, to prescribe a preparation, concerning the ingredients of which he knows absolutely nothing. Is it possible that such carelessness may be one of the causes of waning public confidence in our profession? We leave it to our readers to determine whether such a moral can be drawn from this typical nostrum story.--(_From The Journal A. M. A., March 30, 1907._) LACTOBACILLINE OMITTED FROM N. N. R. Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry