des Prasidenten der Europaischen Gesellschaft der Entgiftungszentralen R. GouLDING Throughout the world hundreds of international medical meetings are held every year. The quality of the papers so presented varies enormously. The cynic might comment that many of them are scarcely worthy of utterance and less still of publication. Equally, the discussion sessions are seldom of such excellence that they bear recording. Indeed, many will aver that the only worthwhile purpose served by any of these meetings is the opportunity they present for social and in formal contact. No such strictures could be veritably applied to the proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of the European Association of Poison Control Centres held in Mainz, Federal Republic of Germany, in 1972. The participants were by no means confined to membership of the Association, nor to those domiciled in Europe. Visitors from further afield, notably from North America, attended in large numbers and contributed actively to the exchange of views, medical and scientific. All the more reason, therefore, that what was said then in the various sessions at Mainz should be printed and circulated first, as a permanent record and, second, for the benefit and delight of a wider circle of readers than the com paratively few interested workers who could be present in Mainz in person. Our gratitude is due to Dr."