Anyone suffering from snuffles and sneezes at this time of year can take comfort from a cough-sweet that not only relieves your symptoms but also clobbers you with inspirational slogans. Some of them are a bit dubious: is it possible, or particularly cheering, to ‘hi-five yourself’? But the instruction to ‘Be unstoppable’ is undeniably helpful. There’s an impressive balance of old and new–the wacky ‘Turn “can do” into “can did!”‘ rubbing shoulders with the classical injunction to ‘Seize the day’.

And of course this kind of thing goes back a long way. The sixteenth-century humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, urged students to keep the fruits of their reading ever before their eyes: ‘In the same way you will write some brief but pithy sayings such as aphorisms, proverbs, and maxims at the beginning and at the end of your books; others you will inscribe on rings or drinking cups; others you will paint on doors and walls or even in the glass of a window so that what may aid learning is constantly before the eye. For, although these measures seem trivial in themselves when taken singly, yet taken together they make a profitable addition to the treasury of knowledge’. Were he alive today, I think I know which brand of cough-sweet he’d be buying…