The opiates possess combined actions and powers not found in any other group of drugs. In therapeutic doses they support the heart and circulation, they relieve pain, they hold in check excessive activity of the glands of internal secretion with all their associated phenomena of exhaustion and collapse; they control spasm and they give sleep. In no other drugs or group of drugs are these properties combined as they are in the opiate group. In emergency medication, opium and its alkaloids, especially morphine, are the medications often most responsible for the saving of life and reason. It is not necessary to argue this point with any intelligent physician or surgeon. For the benefit of the laity, however, and for the benefit of the occasional fanatic and hysterical reformer it is well to state that without the use of morphine and other opiates the mortality among the sick and wounded would be vastly greater, and many of those who might survive in spite of its non-administration to them would bear for the rest of their lives physical and mental and nerve consequences of gravest character. The lives and minds that have been saved by the timely administration of an opiate drug are incalculable. One has only to talk with those who have worked under the stern necessities and emergency conditions of warfare to appreciate this fact. There is no known drug which will replace clinically and therapeutically the opiate group. At present it is as indispensable in meeting emergency indications as is the scalpel of the surgeon. It would be entirely unnecessary to discuss or to apparently defend the use of narcotics in peace as well as in war-time medication if it were not for the fact of recent recognition of the wide existence of opiate addiction in the civilized world. Combined with this is the belief, often met, that as a result of prolonged opiate administration, a certain proportion of soldiers have developed this condition. If the facts of addiction-disease were widely known and applied to its proper handling and remedy, there should be no hysteria concerning and no criticism against legitimate opiate medication; even if unavoidably continued to the point of creating this condition. That opiate-addiction is one of the medical problems of war is recognized and must be openly met. In many cases, just as in private civil practice, the physician is confronted by a choice of evils. To save life or reason he must continue opiate medication even into and past the danger zone of beginning opiate addiction. Lack of popular recognition, appreciation and comprehension of this fact, in the present status of narcotic addiction, contains grave dangers of hysteria and of undeserved and irresponsible criticism. That this criticism is based on ignorance makes it none the less unpleasant and hampering to efficient service.