That Casta-Flora is a “new” combination may be admitted; it is improbable that exactly this combination of obsolete drugs was ever before selected for any purpose whatever, but the statement is misleading in that no new principle of therapeutics is involved. On the contrary, the combination is just what might be expected from haphazard choosing of discarded and nearly forgotten drugs. It seems incredible that a reputable firm of manufacturing pharmacists would make the positive statement that castanea is _almost_ a specific in whooping cough. Why not say it is a specific? It would be about as true. A specific or “almost specific” for this disease would rank among great medical discoveries; but castanea is merely a slightly astringent drug neither better nor worse than scores of other astringent drugs that have been tried, found valueless and discarded. Hardly less surprising are the statements regarding passiflora. This herb has been on the market about three quarters of a century. Not only has it never established itself in scientific medicine, but it is not even mentioned in modern standard works on therapeutics. Of all the statements made in the circular perhaps the most remarkable, in that it is so dangerously misleading, is that regarding helenin, the active principle of elecampane. The statement that this principle (helenin) is destructive of tubercle bacilli in dilutions of 1-10,000 can only mean that it is of extraordinary value in the treatment of tuberculosis; in fact, it is definitely stated that the action of elecampane is similar to that of guaiacol and creosote. It is obvious that any drug which would destroy the tubercle bacilli in the human lungs without exerting a toxic action on the patient would be a great contribution to medicine. But although elecampane may have been used for centuries it has proved to have little, if any, merit, and even the National Standard Dispensatory, p. 848, says: “Elecampane was formerly employed as a tonic, stimulant, diuretic, diaphoretic, expectorant, and emmenagogue, but has now largely fallen into disuse.” One looks in vain in the standard textbooks on therapeutics for a description of the uses of inula (or elecampane), and of its so-called “active principle,” helenin. The circular to which reference has been made says, referring to the use of castanea and passiflora in the treatment of whooping cough: “Gelsemium, when made from the fresh, green plant--as is Merrell’s--is an excellent adjuvant to the above drugs, and allays the nervous irritability so frequently present.”