Our ably conducted contemporary, The Queen, has the following useful remarks on the use of Quack Medicine:

'The belief in quack medicine is one which exists in strength proportioned to the ignorance of the persons who take it. There are certain charms, to some minds, in being able to "doctor" themselves, and to do without the properly authorised medical practitioner. There seems to be with these persons a sense that, in not having paid a fee for advice, they have in a manner gained something. There appears to be also a love of experiment, with a sense behind it that, if their own experiment fails, they can at worst fall back on the skilled physician to amend their mistakes, and to set them up again according to the known and acknowledged rules and practices of medical science. Moreover there is a kind of belief in empirical treatment, which is probably a "survival" from the ancient belief in charms and witchcraft; else how can people possibly put trust in medicines which are advertised as being adapted to cure all manner of diseases of thoroughly differing characters?

'But even among quack medicines there are degrees. There are some of which ordinary medical men readily avail themselves, and which under proper direction may be found really useful. The danger with regard to them is that persons finding such to be useful in the doses prescribed by their medical advisers, take doses on their own responsibility, which prove hurtful, sometimes even fatal in their effects. On the other hand there are a few—though we must confess very few—whose virtues chiefly arise from the faith with which they are taken; and these are as innocuous to the patient as they are profitable only to the vendor. But a very large class—in fact by far the largest—are really positively hurtful. They are described by titles which give no real idea of their character and composition, and they are taken by people much to their harm.

'In a recent number of the Lancet the public were warned against a seemingly harmless preparation, from the effects of which a medical man had found some of his patients seriously suffering. He found that lozenges called "castor-oil lozenges" were being largely used among his patients, who were under the impression that they were taking castor-oil in a form slightly less disagreeable than the usual one. On examination he found that each of these lozenges contained three grains of calomel; and it is not a matter of astonishment that he found some persons who had taken them suffering from severe mercurial salivation. He has found these lozenges sold by grocers, oilmen, chandlers, and even by surgeons and chemists, and the mischief done has been very great. The writer of the letter asks whether the Adulteration Act cannot be brought to bear upon those who sell this "pernicious confectionery;" but the bringing an Act to bear upon an evil is a slow process. The true preventive of mischief from the use of quack medicine is entire abstinence from its use.' Who can doubt the propriety of this advice? Let quack medicines be universally abandoned.