“Betula exerts both an antiseptic and stimulating influence on the urinary passages and is particularly serviceable where a catarrhal condition of the bladder exists. When combined with other diuretics, as in Hydropsin, the drug affords highly satisfactory results in the treatment of ascites, cardiac dropsy and hydrothorax.” Birch is another drug which has been discarded. Few textbooks on materia medica even mention it. That it can materially affect the action of such powerful drugs as squill and digitalis is exceedingly doubtful. An unwarranted implication--that in this preparation the powerful drugs digitalis and squill have been deprived of their dangerous qualities--is the assertion: “Dialysis, removing all resins and colloidals, results in better tolerance on part of sensitive patients, and in more rapid absorption and elimination; which, in turn, means early therapeutic effects and little or no fear of toxic accumulation.” That removal of colloids and resins materially affects the tolerance of these drugs is improbable. To claim that because of their removal, there need be “little or no fear of toxic accumulation” is utterly without warrant. The claim that one preparation containing digitalis is less likely to produce cumulative effect than any other digitalis preparation is contradicted by a mass of evidence. It is claimed that Hydropsin affects “favorably all forms of dropsy or Edema that are at all amenable to medical treatment.” There can be no question but that squill and digitalis, or, better, either singly, used in suitable cases, may relieve dropsical effusions; but to claim that such a complex mixture as Hydropsin can favorably affect all forms of dropsy that are amenable to medical treatment is on its face unwarranted. The claim is made that: “By reason of its unusual potency and relative harmlessness, Hydropsin may be employed to great advantage in all cases where it is desirable to increase the volume of urine without injury to the renal structures.” On the basis of the claimed composition, the action of Hydropsin must be essentially that of digitalis or of digitalis and squill. Consequently, if it possesses “unusual potency,” it cannot possess “relative harmlessness,” and vice versa. Neither digitalis nor squill should be employed “in all cases” of nephritis, even if it is “desirable to increase the volume of urine.”