“The profits to be made by a pharmaceutical house from the sale of a staple drug--a pharmacopeial, National Formulary, or nonproprietary preparation--which enters into free competition with other drugs of the same kind, are moderate; the profits to be made from the sale of a proprietary medicine on which the manufacturer holds a monopoly are usually large--sometimes enormous. There are, broadly, two kinds of proprietary preparations advertised to physicians: One represents laborious research ending in the production of a new medicinal chemical; this product can be patented and the manufacturer can obtain a seventeen-year monopoly on its manufacture and sale. The other represents no research but comprises simple mixtures--frequently of the “shotgun” variety--of well known pharmaceuticals, or biologic products sold under trade names. As these do not represent anything new or original the manufacturer is unable to obtain a patent, but by means of the trade name he can and does obtain a perpetual monopoly. This, from a business standpoint, is more valuable than the limited monopoly granted by a patent. It is not surprising that proprietary remedies of the latter type flourish so long as physicians unthinkingly accept and prescribe them solely on the manufacturer’s valuation. “The Council has practically the undivided support of manufacturers of medicinal chemicals; that is, of proprietaries of the first mentioned type. But pharmaceutical firms which have found it profitable to promote proprietaries of the second type--“specialties,” unscientific or ordinary mixtures of pharmaceuticals or biologic products sold under trade names--have not supported the Council. “When the Council was organized, it was hoped and believed that all the large pharmaceutical houses would find it possible and desirable, if not actually more profitable, to shape their business methods so as to make their proprietary and other articles conform to those conservative standards on which the Council bases its rules, and thus render such articles acceptable for New and Nonofficial Remedies. It soon developed, however, that the methods of the pseudochemical companies, whose sales propaganda in the interest of unscientific nostrums with its attending damage to scientific medicine had led to the establishment of the Council, had found their lodgment in most of the pharmaceutical houses. It was a genuine disappointment to the Council to find that some of the large and old-established firms were not only unwilling to cooperate with the Council, but in many instances exhibited a definite antagonism to the Council’s work.