If we are going to consider all narcotic addicts as in one class we can with justice only consider those characteristics which are common to all members of that class. There is just one fact and characteristic that stands out as of striking and paramount importance in every one of my histories--it is the fact of physical suffering upon complete withdrawal of opiate drug, or a supply of that drug which does not meet the requirements of the physical body-need. Whatever or whoever the narcotic addict was before his use of opiate drugs--whatever had been the character and circumstances of the initial administration of narcotic drug--after a time, as I have repeatedly written elsewhere, after addiction-disease has once developed, the history of every opiate addict is that of suffering and of struggle. After addiction-disease is once developed the addict loses whatever euphoric sensation he may possibly have experienced, and all that narcotic administration spells for him is relief from suffering. Without the drug of his addiction he endures intense physical suffering and misery. Without the drug of his addiction he cannot pursue a social, economic, or physically endurable existence. He may have been primarily defective, degenerate, depraved or vicious; his primary administration of the drug may have been deliberate indulgence, disreputable associations, idle curiosity, any combination of conditions which may be stated;--he may have been an upright, honest and intelligent, hard-working, self-supporting, worthy and normal citizen in whom the primary administration of opiate drug was a result of unwise, ignorant or unavoidable medication;--he may have been an ignorant purchaser of advertised patent medicines containing addiction-forming drugs. Whatever his original status, mental, moral, physical or ethical, and whatever the circumstances of his primary indulgence; once addiction-disease has developed in his body the vital fact of his history is the same--subsequent use of opiate drug means not pleasure, not vice, not appetite, not habit--it means relief of physical suffering and the control of physical symptoms. My present definition of narcotic drug addiction is as follows; a definite physical disease condition, presenting constant and definite physical symptoms and signs, progressing through clean-cut clinical stages of development, explainable by a mechanism of body protection against the action of narcotic toxins, accompanied if unskillfully managed by inhibition of function, autotoxicosis and autotoxemia, its victims displaying in some cases deterioration and psychoses which are not intrinsic to the disease, but are the result of toxemia, and toxicosis, malnutrition, anxiety, fear and suffering.