Letter: Skin reactions to practolol.

looked in the drug addiction film "The Man with the Golden Arm." Then at my outpatient clinic another patient suffering from neurotic depression told me how very ill she felt after stoppng her regimen of phenelzine and haloperidol to go on to lorazepam.The lorazepam made her excessively drowsy and she stopped it after a day or so but then she felt depressed and irritable and also described this feeling of cold and shivering.This last symptom is quite reminiscent of the "cold turkey" reaction to the with- drawal of narcotics from the habituated, and the reaction followed so swiftly the disoon- tinuation of the drug that I wonder if it might not represent a genuine physical res- ponse to deprival of the drug rather than a purely psychological one or the return of the depression.The medical adviser to the manufacturers tells me that no such with- drawal symptoms have previously been re- ported but I wonder if any of your readers can record similar experiences?-Iam, etc., BRICE PI1-rThe London Hospital (St.Clement's) London E.3 Malaria in the United Kingdom SIR,-In your epidemiological report (5 January, p. 43) you mention 84 cases of malaria in immigrants to the U.K. in 1972.The adult populations of countries where malaria is endemic are generally considered to be inmune to malaria in the sense that they do not suffer overt attacks of the disease.It would be valuable to know if there is any record of the proportion of innigrants in whom malaria was considered to be the cause of their illness rather than simply a concomitant finding, the number of adults, and whether any factors were found, such as acute infections or steroid therapy, which might have been responsible for a temporary lowering of resistance to malaria.-Iam, etc.,