Many opiate addicts when about to undergo operation, have provided for possible contingencies by the concealment of, or by outside provision for, a supply of opiate sufficient in amount to meet their physical needs. There are very many addicts who have, out of their past experience and study upon themselves, competently controlled their own narcotic-drug-disease during treatment for other conditions, operative or medical. The number of narcotic addicts is not few who have been cared for medically with nursing attention, or have undergone operations for the remedy of various surgical conditions, have recovered, convalesced and been discharged without the physician or surgeon becoming aware that his patient was addicted. This is not a comment in criticism upon my professional brethren. In my own experience such a case is a matter of quite recent occurrence. A patient treated by me in a hospital, for conditions other than addiction, one day unexpectedly revealed to me the fact of long standing addiction. The patient had been afraid to tell me about this condition until thoroughly convinced of my attitude towards it, and had secured opiate medication elsewhere. It seems strange that a condition of as powerful influence over body function and metabolism as is exerted by the addiction mechanism of narcotic drug-disease should not long ago have received exhaustive and complete clinical and laboratory study along the lines of its manifestations and influences, as well as along the line of reduction and deprivation of the drug of addiction. In view of the above it would seem to be of vastly more importance at the present time that the mass of practitioners of surgery as well as of medicine should understand and be able to control action and reaction in a narcotic addict as a result of his addiction-disease mechanism, than it is that they should attempt the mere reduction or denial of the drug of addiction. Appreciation of the above would make available to narcotic addicts, suffering from other conditions, hospital and professional treatment and remedy of those conditions. Under present prevailing conceptions of addiction, many honest and worthy people addicted to opiates dare not avail themselves of needed treatment for medical conditions or operation for surgical conditions because of their uncertainty regarding the attitude towards and handling of addiction-disease existing in and carried out by the institution or practitioner to whom they would ordinarily appeal for help. The addict lives in constant fear of some injury or illness which may necessitate his coming into the hands of those whose conception of addiction is not in accord with the addict’s experience of addiction-disease facts.