Surely a disease having so definite a symptomatology and, I believe, so plain a pathology, must be susceptible of rational cure. That such a cure has not yet been found by those who so loudly proclaim to have found one I honestly believe. Whether others have devised more promising lines of treatment I frankly do not know. But a cure must be found which does more than any I have succeeded in finding. In what other disease would a patient who, after reaching a certain point, beyond which he could not progress towards recovery, be told that from then on everything rested with him, although he himself knew that his need for help was really as great as it ever was? In what other disease would any physician worthy of the name calmly tell a patient that, having taken a “cure,” he was, _ipse facto_, cured, and become highly incensed when the patient pleaded that his condition was in many respects more desperate than before treatment? The medical profession must seriously study addiction. Of material there is, unfortunately, an abundance. Some high authority should see that every facility is afforded the proper persons for employing it. It is not unlikely that many of the “cures” which have been advocated have in them some elements of good, properly selected and properly applied in each individual case. Possibly competent investigation, furnished with every facility, might result in the discovery of a truly specific cure. I have long thought that there was such a possibility in more than one direction, but investigation of these would involve very careful and laborious work, as well as considerable cost. Here indeed, would seem to be a wonderful opportunity for philanthropy. But while such a specific cure would be an untold blessing, we need not find one in order to meet the situation--at least, much more successfully than it is being met at present. Coordination of the entire problem of addiction, in the hands of the few men whose work in this field is most promising (and the men I have in mind are not those with whose vaunted cures I have had such unhappy experiences) would almost certainly lead to valuable results. While every effort should be exerted to determine the best lines of treatment, meanwhile there is a great deal which should be done in other directions. Let the medical profession help in bringing about better understanding of addiction--first, of course, learning this themselves. Until the addict can be offered rational treatment, the profession should do what it can in making the lives of addicts less unbearable by removing from the public mind some of the gross misconceptions concerning addiction, seeing to it, especially, that these unfortunates are not stigmatized as “morphine fiends” and that they are given the means of obtaining, without risk and hardship and almost prohibitive cost, the supply of their drug which, until they are cured, is to them as necessary as the air they breathe.