A common procedure is to send a question form, and, after answering the query, “What are you suffering from?” with “Neurasthenia”, the company “carefully study” this, and then inform you with a gravity that would grace the pages of “Punch”, “You are the victim of a very intractable type of Neurasthenia”, so intractable in fact that it will need “additional treatment”—­at an “additional” fee.

The quack’s advertisements are models of the skilful use of suggestion, and turn to rare account the half-knowledge of physiology most men pick up from periodicals.  He frightens you with alarming and untrue statements, gains your confidence by a display of semi-true facts reinforced where weak by false assertions, and, having benefited himself far more than you, leaves you to do what you should have done at first, go to a doctor or a hospital.

Were it made compulsory for the recipe to be printed on all patent medicines, people would lose their childlike faith in coloured water and purges, and cease the foolish and dangerous practice of treating diseases of which they know little with drugs of which they know less.

The British Medical Association of 429, Strand, London, W.C., issue two 1_s_. books—­“Secret Remedies:  What they cost and what they contain”, “More Secret Remedies”—­giving the ingredients and cost price of most patent medicines.  You are strongly urged to send for these books, which should be in every home.

The basis of every cure for epilepsy (not obviously fraudulent) is bromides.  The usual method is to condemn vigorously the use of potassium bromide, and substitute ammonium or sodium bromide for it.  Some advertisers condemn all the bromides, and prescribe a mixture of them; others condemn potassium bromide, and shamelessly forward a pure solution of this same salt in water as a “positive cure!”

In all cases the sale price is out of reasonable proportion to the cost, victims paying outrageous sums for very cheap drugs.

Most epileptics are poor, because their infirmity debars them from continuous or well-paid work, leaving them dependent on relatives, often in poor circumstances also.  The picture of patients, already lacking many real necessities, still further denying themselves for weeks or months to purchase a worthless powder, is truly a pitiful one.

Bromides are unsatisfactory drugs in the treatment of epilepsy, but they are the best we have at present.  Get them made up to the prescription of a doctor, and see him every month to report progress and be examined.  In the end, this plan will be very much cheaper, and incomparably better, than buying crude bromides from quacks.

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