To the Editor:— A recent editorial (New Drugs—Miracles or Mirages? J. A. M. A. 157: 1410-1411 [April 16] 1955) has very accurately defined the present state of medical thinking that follows the introduction of each new drug in therapy. The familiar pattern of enthusiastic reports, lethal side-reactions, and therapeutic paralysis are well known. Each new drug must be seen within the framework of its need, importance, and therapeutic possibilities. The use of chlorpromazine hydrochloride [10-(γ-dimethylaminopropyl)-2-chlorophenothiazine hydrochloride] and Rauwolfia serpentina in psychiatric treatment has occasioned renewed hope for thousands of hospitalized chronically ill mental patients. Reports of a rather alarming nature have tended to obscure their potential therapeutic possibilities and may well open a pathway for counter-attack by the therapeutic nihilists. This brief note proposes to study the major side-effects resulting from chlorpromazine therapy in psychiatry, on the basis of a recent survey of 4,360 patients in 14 psychiatric hospitals in