The user of morphine always retains his faculties. He is usually capable of intelligent conversation. Unlike the alcoholic's brain, his is not inflamed. It is impossible for the physician intelligently to discuss his symptoms with an alcoholic; with a victim of drugs, on the other hand, he can thresh out every detail of the case. Later codeine was placed upon the market, supposedly an innocent alkaloid of opium, non-habit-forming, but still capable of eliminating pain and suffering due to illness or injury. After taking up this work, my investigations soon led me to realize that it was not the quantity of the drug taken which produced the drug habit, but the regularity of the dosage. I also found from my clinical comparisons that codeine has only one eighth the strength of morphine, yet in the end just as surely a producer of the drug habit similar to that of morphine itself. HEROIN At this writing the most harmful form of opiate with which we have to deal is heroin. This preparation of morphine was first put upon the market by German chemists about fifteen years ago, the word "heroin" being nothing more than a trade name. It was first used in cough mixtures, and was widely discussed in the medical and pharmaceutical press, where it was claimed that all the harm of morphine had virtually been eliminated in this product, which, without having the depressing effect of morphine, at the same time preserved its stimulating effect. A great number of physicians themselves have acquired the habit of taking opiates in this form, believing at the outset that they were not harmful drugs. My investigations soon showed me that heroin is three times as strong as morphine in its action, and for that reason its use sets up definite tolerance more quickly than any other form of opiate. For the same reason it shows more quickly a deleterious effect upon the human system, the mental, moral and physical deterioration of its takers being more marked than in the case of any other form of opiate. Until the Federal Pure Food Law was passed we did not know that many of the well-known, advertised medical preparations contained quantities of various salts or alkaloids of opium. The unsuspecting users of patent medicine were making themselves confirmed drug-users unwittingly, and did not realize how necessary the habit had become to them until for one reason or another they had been deprived of their usual daily dosage.