Echoes of the Month

In his Norman Kerr Memorial Lecture on " Drug Addiction " Sir William Willcox said that the commonest cause of addiction in the citizen classes was undoubtedly the prescription of the drug for medical purposes. It was to be feared that after operations drugs were too often given as a routine practice, without sufficient regard to the dangers of toxic action and the development of addiction disease. The continued use of drugs for insomnia was a method of treatment harmful for the cure of the condition, and patients should be led to take that view. The terrors of insomnia were incomparable to those of drug addiction, and a little sleep following natural methods of treatment was of far greater benefit than the more prolonged abnormal sleep produced by narcotic drugs. As to the general lines of treatment the only hopeful method was one which recognised that drug addiction was a disease requiring the same careful attention to detail that any other disease would receive. The general standard of health should be raised to as high a pitch as possible, and any predisposing factors should be dealt with. In that way the prospect of