[MEDICINE, ALCOHOLISM]

Statistical Report of 4,000 Cases of Drunkenness Treated in 1892 at the Keeley Institute, Dwight, Illinois [with] The Keeley Cure and the Clergy

Leslie Enraught Keeley (1832-1900) was an 1864 graduate of Rush Medical College who served briefly as a Union Army surgeon before opening a private medical practice in Dwight, Illinois. While in the military, Keeley had become interested in the problem of alcoholism and convinced that it was a disease rather than a vice. In partnership with a pharmacist, John Oughton, and a minister and temperance lecturer, Frederick Hargreaves, Keeley worked to develop a medicine to cure alcoholics. They began marketing their remedy (which was composed of bichloride of gold and strychinine, among other things) through the mail, but soon opened the first Keeley Institute in Dwight, followed by more than 100 branches in North America and Europe, where treatment was offered for addiction to alcohol, nicotine, and narcotics. The mainstream medical profession scoffed at Keeley's medicine with good reason, but nonetheless the "cure" showed some success, in good measure due to Keeley's emphasis on group therapy and community support to help patients remain abstinent. The Statistical Report offered here (1896, 12 pp, with 2 illustrations from photographs) provides details on the age, nationality, occupation, medical history, drinking habits, and treatment of a year's worth of patients. It also reports on the number of known relapses, including the reasons patients gave for returning to drink -- the most common of which was "visiting at immoral places." The Keeley Cure and the Clergy (c. 1898, 32 pp) offers a series of testimonials from Illinois clergy who have had the opportunity to see Keeley's methods in action -- one of whom goes so far as to conclude that Keeley "should be awarded an international world's medal for the greatest and most beneficent scientific discovery of the nineteenth century." Both pamphlets in fine condition; neither found in OCLC.

Item #19130

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