Its latest convert . . . actually she's been necking the stuff for three years . . . is rather more surprising. Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein, writer of such stress-inducing bestsellers as No Logo and Fences and Windows:

Dispatches from the Front does not seem like one to tremor easily. Nor is she a likely candidate to endorse any corporate product.

Yet Klein's conversion to the distinctive small yellow bottle of Rescue Remedy came while she was reporting from Iraq in 2004 and she noticed a colleague adding drops to her bottled water from a vial while most other journalists chewed valium. "I use it if I'm having trouble sleeping, or before a speech if I'm tense, " she recently told reporters.

If the title of Klein's latest book . . . The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster . . . is anything to go by, she and her readers will likely be hitting the Rescue Remedy hard in the coming months.

"I have no real sense that it works, " says Klein. "I think of it like a kind of talisman. I like the old-fashioned country doctor packaging."

While that last sentence may not be exactly the ringing approval marketers of Bach Flower remedies envisioned, its sales have none the less been rocketing upwards at incredible rates in the past few years.

As it's generally become more accepted that a healthy mind plays an essential role in maintaining a healthy body, the Bach remedies, specifically aimed at treating emotions and feelings rather than symptoms, are gaining an ever stronger foothold. But not surprisingly doubters remain. For some, particularly scientists and psychotherapists, the idea that a few drops of a botanical extract can solve the emotional worries of the world has met its criticisms.

However, says Tessa Jordan, an eminent homeopath who has been practising for 20 years, that may be because quantifying emotions and the improvement in them is a difficult if not impossible thing to do.

"Measuring emotions is a really hard thing to do, " she says. "If I wake up and I feel good, how can I measure that?"

Because Bach Flower remedies work purposely on improving the emotional state of the client, Jordan and other practitioners give clients a lengthy consultation.

But why not opt for the more socially established course of psychotherapy? "I'd say the advantage is we don't need to analyse the past so much, " says Jordan. "That takes a huge pressure off clients because they don't have to go back to a sad place or sad thoughts.

With Bach Flower remedies we're dealing with what you feel right now. With Bach Flowers there's also the added feeling that this is self-help."

With their signature tincture Rescue Remedy in the familiar yellow bottle accepted as part of the mental-health tool-bag in health stores and with homeopaths, Bach remedies are now tackling one of the greatest causes of splayed emotions in the modern world . . . stress, and the insomnia it can create.

Their newest product, Rescue Sleep, is a combination of Rescue Remedy and White Chestnut. It's certainly a lucrative route for Nelson's, the homeopathic pharmacy company which owns the Bach Flower remedy rights. The inability for restful sleep thanks to modern day stress, according to the Health and Safety Executive in the UK, affects four out of 10 people.

More worryingly they conclude that those stressful thoughts about family life or work can be blamed for triggering up to 85% of chronic illnesses.

These range from an inability to sleep to mild depression and fatigue, to skin irritations, to neck, shoulder and back pain and digestive disorders.