BRITISH NEWSPAPERS AND THE NOSTRUM BUSINESS

The British Medical Association has recently issued a small book entitled "Secret Remedies," which contains the results of analyses made by the association of the nostrums most widely advertised in the British press. In many respects it is similar to the booklet that The Journal has been getting out for some years past—the Propaganda for Reform in Proprietary Medicines. The British book differs from the Propaganda in that it deals exclusively with the so-called "patent medicines" —the "ethical" nostrums not being considered. To increase the British public's knowledge of the "patent medicine" evil, "Secret Remedies" is advertised and sold to the public. When the advertisement was offered to some of the large London dailies and weeklies they promptly refused it. As the book is not only of general interest, but of distinct educational value, the newspapers as "public educators" might reasonably have been expected not only to carry the paid