A student of materia medica can not fail to observe that many substances come into notice, rise into popular favor and sink back into obscurity, only to give place to others which follow the same course. This observation should tend to make one conservative, but we are so accustomed to brilliant discoveries, whereby the impossibility of yesterday becomes the accomplished fact of to-day, that many of us have cast conservatism to the winds and accept, with extraordinary credulity, the statements of the charlatan, the falsifier and the self-styled investigator.
We are coming to appreciate the indecency of allowing ourselves to be made the dupes and unpaid agents of the makers of worthless compounds, which are forced on our notice in high-sounding, and often meaningless, phrases. We must also be on our guard against accepting the statements of those who may be interested in reporting too "optimistically" on nostrums sold at