The subject is too important to excuse anything but the utmost frankness in speaking of the serious misconception which medical men only too generally share with the masses in regard to the subject of addiction. Unless the profession realizes its own ignorance, all point will be taken from the appeal which I wish to make to the physicians of this country to lose no time in equipping themselves to deal adequately with this great problem. It may well be imagined that the task which I have thus set myself is no easy one, viewed from any one of half a dozen angles. Yet, if I am correct, in believing that I can thereby make a small contribution to the cause which now means so much to all of us, I must do so regardless of every difficulty. Addiction with me goes back a number of years, covering in fact, almost my entire career as a physician. During this entire time, as will be more fully referred to, I have tried cure after cure, besides having, time and again, sought by own efforts to rid myself of this burden. I have naturally during these years studied and thought much about the problem which has meant so much to me. All this by way of showing why I believe that my experiences and opinions should have some value. First of all, let it be clearly understood that the addiction which I shall discuss is limited strictly to opium and its derivatives; first, because my own experience is limited to this group and, second, because much that I shall have to say does not apply to all so-called habit-forming drugs to an equal extent, and to some of them not at all. Addiction as thus limited is as true a disease as any with which the human body is afflicted. To look on the opium addict as a man with a vicious habit which he could quit if only he truly cared to do so displays a profound misunderstanding of plain facts. As well claim that a man with typical malarial infection has simply become so accustomed to having chills and fever at a given hour on certain days that when this hour arrives he quakes through mere habit as to claim that the equally characteristic and even more pronounced and distressing symptoms which manifest themselves when the addict is deprived of his drug are due to habit, that is, to “a condition which by repetition has become spontaneous.” We would, as a matter of fact, be less absurd in the former instance than in the latter; for we could argue the case out with our malarial friend, telling him he could conquer his “habit” by the exercise of will power, and--provided we argued long enough--we might convince ourselves that we were right because he would cease to shake, his fever would subside and until the next crop of parasites was turned loose in his blood stream, he would to all intents and purposes feel a well man, while in the latter case the more we talked of habit--that is, the longer the addict was deprived of his dose--the plainer would become the picture of a disease-racked body and a tormented mind.