THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE PHYSICIAN The doctor who begins to take the drug in order to whip his flagging energies into new effort finds the habit fastened on him before he realizes what has occurred. His endeavors to reduce his daily dosage fail, and he becomes thoroughly enmeshed. His acquired tolerance for the drug has brought about so great a physical change that deprivation or even reduction of dosage is intolerable. Hundreds of cases where physicians had experimented with the drug with these disastrous results have been brought to my attention. No one shows less foresight, less appreciation of the danger of tampering with drugs, than the physician himself. I am constantly amazed by the fact that any doctor will take even the slightest risk of becoming a drug-user. That many voluntarily incur the peril passes my understanding. I have seen an astonishing number of physicians who for various physical reasons other than exhaustion and the need of stimulant considered themselves eligible to experiment with drugs. It is a curious thing that, as a class, physicians and surgeons are themselves singularly averse to submitting to surgical operation, even when symptomatic indications strongly urge it. Why surgeons, in particular, should so generally dread the application of the knife in their own cases is a puzzle, for of course no class more thoroughly understands the need of surgery. I could mention many cases of this sort, but one in particular recurs to my memory. He was one of the most careful and best-informed doctors in the country, and he was not without a certain special knowledge of the peril involved in habit-forming drugs; but he suffered from a painful rectal trouble, and although he considered himself too intelligent a man to go too far with a dangerous substance, he did go too far. He had thought that he could leave drugs off whenever he desired; he found that he could not. THE PHYSICIAN WHO TAKES DRUGS