Most physicians have at some time or other in the course of their practice encountered cases of narcotic addiction. Most addicts have appealed to the physician for advice and help. A very large proportion of them have at different times made effort to obtain relief from their affliction through the avenues of various forms of treatment, advertised and otherwise. Most physicians have at some time or other made effort to rescue some victim from drug addiction, and as a rule have given over the effort as hopeless, because even when they had succeeded in taking his narcotic away from the patient, usually after an experience trying and exhausting to both, the patient has resumed narcotic administration--according to the patient, because he had to--according to the average observer, because he wanted to. Frequently the patient has refused to persevere to the end of treatment and has abandoned his attempts before the treatment has reached the point of cessation of opiate medication--the patient stating that he could not--the observer believing that he would not, continue, and did not have the courage or stamina or will to endure the necessary suffering. The medical profession as a whole has adopted a cynical attitude towards the possibility of permanent “cure,” and towards the efficacy of medical treatment, which has tended to send the addict to quacks and charlatans and various advertised remedies. It is not my purpose to discuss in this book in detail the various methods, and treatments and cures advocated and employed in the handling of the drug addict. This alone would require a volume in itself. Three broad lines of procedure have been employed; so-called “slow-reduction,” “sudden withdrawal,” and withdrawal accompanied by the administration of various drugs, such as those in the belladonna group and its alkaloids.