"You attack us because we cure your patients," is their charge. They assume always that the public has no grievance against them, or, rather, they calmly ignore the public in the matter. In his address at the last convention of the Proprietary Association, the retiring president, W. A. Talbot of Piso's Consumption Cure, turning his guns on the medical profession, delivered this astonishing sentiment:

"No argument favoring the publication of our formulas was ever uttered which does not apply with equal force to your prescriptions. It is pardonable in you to want to know these formulas, for they are good. But you must not ask us to reveal these valuable secrets, to do what you would not do yourselves. The public and our law-makers do not want your secrets nor ours, and it would be a damage to them to have them."

The physicians seem to have awakened, somewhat tardily, indeed, to counter-attack. The American Medical Association has organized a Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry to investigate and pass on the "ethical" preparations advertised to physicians, with a view to listing those which are found to be reputable and useful. That this is regarded as a direct assault on the proprietary interests is suggested by the protests, eloquent to the verge of frenzy in some cases, emanating from those organs which the manufacturers control. Already the council has issued some painfully frank reports on products of imposingly scientific nomenclature; and more are to follow.