Comment.--Investigation of the various “patent” and so-called “ethical proprietaries” advertised to the public and to the medical profession shows that those that have any value as therapeutic agents depend for that value on some well known drug or drugs. Hence, while many proprietaries have some virtue, the ingredients which are of any value are so concealed by the coined and “near-scientific” names applied to them that these drugs are usually unrecognizable. The many and various acetanilid mixtures furnish examples of this class of proprietaries. And now we find another example in that much advertised nostrum, Uriseptin. According to our chemists, the chief ingredients of Uriseptin are hexamethylenamin and lithium benzoate. Hexamethylenamin is a valuable so-called urinary antiseptic--probably one of the best we have. It is a pity that more physicians do not know the value of this drug in and of itself; it is a common ingredient of many proprietaries, and yet too seldom prescribed under its true name. There is no reason for its being given in the form of a nostrum; it requires no skill in compounding, for it is best given in its powdered form, either in capsules or otherwise. So that, like acetanilid, the old argument of the nostrum men that the preparation needs skill in compounding will not hold. If a physician wants to prescribe hexamethylenamin let him prescribe it in its simplest and best form, and thus know exactly what he is giving. Lithium benzoate also has its rightful place in the materia medica, but not hidden in a proprietary mixture to be prescribed unknowingly. It is hard to conceive of any one thing that operates more disastrously against scientific therapeutics than the vicious practice of marketing under proprietary names standard and valuable drugs, with their identity purposely concealed. Yet how frequently it is done. Well-known drugs of unquestioned worth are combined with those that are little known and of doubtful value, or more likely absolutely worthless, the mixture is put on the market under a high-sounding name and it is exploited through physicians as a panacea for all kinds of diseases. In this, as in so many other instances, an “analysis” made to order is given to lend an air of apparent respectability and scientific standing to the preparation or to its exploiters, with the object, of course, of misleading physicians into thinking they are reading unbiased testimony. In addition, the “literature” accompanying the preparation is usually a jargon of pseudo-scientific verbiage put in to serve the same purpose as the analysis--that of catching the careless physician.