identified depression and hypochondriasis as symptomatic of senility's early stages. Salmon produced proprietary medicinal products that included pills, powders, elixirs and lozenges, sometimes with accompanying instructions e.g. The Vertues and Use of Dr. William Salmon Family Pills. His products were heavily promoted in his published books. Critics differ in their opinions on Salmon's writing style. In his books Salmon uses a mixture of the language of 'modern' chemistry and philosophy and the language of older Galenic medicine. It has been argued that such a mixture of terms would have been acceptable at the time and provided "good advertising copy". Salmon has been described as "modern, traditionally learned, and commercially minded". Others have described Salmon's style less charitably as "absurd rhetoric". He actively challenged attempts by others to use his name and mark to advertise their own products. He successfully allied with other apothecaries in blocking an attempt by the Royal College of Physicians to "Monopolize all the practise of Physick into their own hands" in the 1690s. This controversy was part of a longer and broader contention between physicians and apothecaries over the control of medical education and practice. In this context, Salmon and Nicholas Culpepper have been classed as reformers. Partly as a result of such tensions, Salmon became a target of satire and "collegiate obloquy." Surgeon James Yonge published the pamphlet Medicaster medicatus, or, A remedy for the itch of scribbling (1685) criticizing the writings of John Browne and of William Salmon. In 1699 Yonge's Sidrophel Vapulans: or, The Quack-Astrologer tossed in a blanket was directed at Salmon, and he was satirized in physician Sir Samuel Garth's mock-heroic poem, "The Dispensary". Salmon is also referred to in the satirical poem "Hermetick Raptures", as a "little Salmon trout" who industriously plys his "Fam'ly Pills". Between his medical practice, the sale of medicines, and the sales of his books, Salmon is presumed to have had a considerable income. He accumulated an extensive library, and owned scientific and mathematical instruments including two microscopes and a calculating device called Napier's bones. "If one may judge by his library, Salmon must have been a man of erudition, and of wide and liberal tastes; he must also have been a thorough-going bibliophile and possessed of means sufficient to gratify his acquisitiveness." In addition to his collection of books, he owned curiosities from the West Indies, and paintings from the Netherlands, again indicating well-off status.