The practical therapeutic application of wide-interval administration of opiate drug is made possible by the fact that the narcotic addict can tolerate without harm large doses of the drug of addiction. It is made controllable by the fact, that, within certain limits, the length of time over which a dose of narcotic drug will maintain a patient in narcotic drug balance--or free from the symptomatology of drug need--is in mathematical ratio to the size of the dose administered. Each addict requires, under the conditions of his daily life at a given time, to satisfy the demands of his physical addiction-disease mechanism, and to maintain him in narcotic drug balance, an amount of drug which can be estimated in terms of twenty-four hours and which I have called the amount of minimum daily need. The most important consideration in the administration of narcotic drug to a narcotic addict is to supply the amount of minimum daily need and maintain narcotic drug balance with the least inhibition of function. Failure to maintain narcotic drug balance and a degree below the amount of minimum daily need renders the addict functionally and physically incompetent. He is in a condition of physical and nerve incapacity and exhaustion. He has no physical tone; he has markedly impaired circulation; he cannot react, he has no recuperative powers; he has constantly in his body, according to modern theory, unneutralized autogenous poison which robs him of vitality, reaction and functional efficiency even though it may not be present in sufficient amounts to give rise to the violent spectacular and agonizing manifestations of complete narcotic deprivation. In other words, as I have written elsewhere, “the reduction of the drug of addiction below the amount of body-need robs the addict of his most valuable asset in securing and maintaining recuperative powers.” In no other disease would an intelligent physician persist in the application of measures which robbed his patient of recuperative powers and expect satisfactory issue of the case he was trying to treat. Until the physician and patient are ready and prepared for the institution of the stage of final withdrawal of drug, the patient should never be allowed to drop below the amount of minimum daily need in his opiate intake.