Sulphur is a time-honoured preparation: it has been used in the treatment of acne for at least forty years. It now attracts much less therapeutic interest  because of the availability of more cosmetically elegant,  less odiferous, topical  treatments and  the  wider  use of oral therapies. It is assumed that sulphur is predominantly comedolytic but  one study has shown that  the drug is possibly even comedogenic.  Follicular  cast studies, which are perhaps a more critical marker of an effect on early noninflamed lesions, have yet to be performed. No data have been published to show whether sulphur affects the sebum excretion rate but clinical observation suggests that this is unlikely.