The situation in the experimental field is unresolved; too many factors require clarification before the critical experiment can be conducted to settle the matter once and for all. However, as there is now plentiful evidence to convince any reasonable physician that commonly available analgesics, when abused, carry a significant health risk, one may resonably ask whether any further experimental evidence is needed? The object of this review is in no sense divisive, i.e., by pointing out discrepancies in the available data to thereby cloud the issue rather than resolve them. The problem of abuse lies properly in the field of public health education, and the first step to this would surely be an appropriate worning on the packaging of all commonly used analgesics. For future research, however, government health authorities should be guided in their preclinical testing requirements for mild antiinflammatory analgesics, and enough is now known to draw up guidelines for good laboratory practice in this field.

World literature on renal damage whieh has been attributed to phenacetin is reviewed and evaluated, together with ineidental effeets of the drug on other organ systems. Renal damage due to single drugs is found to be a rarity, and epidemiologieal, pathologieal, and elinieal data are often inadequate to provide a firm basis for the eoneept of "phenaeetin nephropathy." Partieular note is made of possible toxieity of other eommon eonstituents of analgesie mixtures and the meehanisms of renal damage. Animal experimental data is eollated and eompared, and the inadequaey of mueh experimental work is noted. More work, partieularly in the field of epidemiology, and further investigation of individual variation in metabolizing phenaeetin and other eommonly used analgesies are required. A note on existing legislation with regard to phenaeetin‐eontaining analgesies eoncludes the review.

1. Abnormalities in glycoprotein metabolism are believed to play a role in diabetic microangiopathy. We have therefore measured the urinary excretion of carbohydrate-containing materials in normal and diabetic subjects. 2. Diabetic subjects were found to excrete excessive quantities of such material, which may parallel the increases observed in plasma and structural glycoproteins found in previous studies. 3. Systemic administration of a synthetic derivative of vasicine, which is known to affect mucus glycoprotein, was shown to restore these elevated urinary concentrations seen in diabetic subjects to values close to normal, but his drug had no significant effect on urinary concentrations of such materials in normal subjects.

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