THE USE OF amphetamine for the therapy of behavior disorders and learning disorders in children is a well-established clinical tradition.1-3 As early as 1937 Molitch and Eccles4 published a placebo-controlled study of the effects of benzedrine sulfate on intelligence and performance scores of 93 delinquent boys between the ages of 11 and 17. Though the data are presented in percentage improvements, and not subject to statistical evaluation, the study strongly indicated that there were significant improvements in performance. Nevertheless, as noted in Freeman's critical review5 the early strong claims for the value of amphetamines appear to have stifled further controlled research with children until very recently.
Eisenberg and his colleagues6 studied effects of amphetamine on delinquent boys and found a striking symptomatic improvement of the drug-treated group over placebo and no treatment groups, using cottage parents' ratings and sociometric ratings. Weiss et