There is also a class of institutions in which the "cure" for the drug habit consists in the administration of the drug itself in a disguised form. In such surroundings a patient will contentedly stay indefinitely, for the chains of his habit bind him to the spot. The very fact that he wishes to stay may be accepted as a proof that he has not been benefited by it. For the man who has been freed from a drug habit desires a normal life in the world; indeed, only his reëntrance into its turmoil and bustle can set him surely on his feet. The average sanatorium, accustomed to the time-honored and thoroughly established system of making its patients comfortable,--in other words, pampering and coddling them,--finds it difficult, if not impossible, to conform in every detail to the necessities of a system like mine. Even if the institution is equipped with every possible facility, it is highly probable that the physicians in charge may be mentally unfitted to the work. Inured by every detail of their training to methods that make a successful treatment of drugs impossible, they find themselves incapable of changing when confronted by specific cases that demand a radically different treatment. The institutions themselves are equally inadaptable. The sanatorium, it must be remembered, is really a boarding-house or hotel, and the business of boarding-house or hotel, whether it presents an epicurean or "sanitary" bill of fare, or whether its staff is supplemented by trained nurses and physicians or not, remains a boarding-house or hotel. Its main province is to keep its paying guests and to make them comfortable. The whole sanatorium situation so far as it relates to the "cure" of those addicted to the use of drugs and alcohol may be summed up in a few words. The average sanatorium is merely a small colony of drug-users. No one can deny that. Now, no man who has been freed from his desire for drugs and no one who is being made uncomfortable by deprivation will remain in such surroundings for any length of time. The natural conclusion is that such institutions are not accomplishing what they have promised to be able to accomplish. The inmates are still drug-users. This is not true of American institutions alone. Within a few months I have had as an eleven-day inmate of my own institution a very wealthy man who has made three European journeys to find relief from the drug habit, on each journey going the rounds of six or eight celebrated institutions, and taking the treatment of each without result. Successful treatment is brief treatment, and no establishment operating upon a system of a weekly charge to patients will make an earnest effort to release these patients as soon as possible. In their desire to make their patients comfortable, and so prolong their stay, their usual quantity of drugs is supplied to them, though of course in some disguised form. There is no other way of accomplishing this.