Such cases as this, where addiction-disease co-exists or is intercurrent with other medical or with surgical conditions, are not as uncommon as may be supposed. That they are frequently unrecognized the histories of many narcotic addicts demonstrates, and is discussed later. Board of Health and Insurance mortality statistics are undoubtedly very incomplete upon this situation. Addiction, regarded as a habit or indulgence, may easily be overlooked or disregarded as a cause of death, direct or contributing. It may easily be omitted from returns made out, however actually important a part in the final issue may have been played by the influences, upon body function and upon physical resistance and recuperation, of an unappreciated and inadequately controlled addiction-disease. It is earlier stated that the common idea of the addict to narcotic drugs as a poor risk is an undeserved reputation, and is not to be laid at the door of addiction existence itself. In very many cases of opiate addiction, the opposite of the popular belief is true. The opiate addict, if his addiction mechanism is competently appreciated, its reactions accurately estimated, and its influences wisely controlled, is quite other than a bad risk. Indeed the mechanism of addiction and the opiate which caused it can often be handled in such a way in the control of glandular, circulatory, nervous and other function and reaction as to aid in the carrying over of emergencies, medical and surgical. A case in point is an emergency operation on the pancreas, performed upon a man in extremis, whose unexpected recovery and convalescence astonished all observers by being remarkedly rapid and uncomplicated, due unquestionably in large part to the early recognition and clinical handling of his addiction-disease, and the possibilities it created for unusual opiate medication. It has been my experience at times, when called in medical consultation upon post-operative cases whose lack of repair and slowness of recovery could not be accounted for, to discover an unsuspected addiction, and to find that the lack of repair and slowness of recovery was due simply and slowly to the want of comprehension of, or to inadequate control of addiction mechanism existing in the patient.