JF Ptak Science Books Post 2729
Leslie E. Kelley (1836-1900) was a doctor, lawyer, and a Civil War surgeon who opened his own surgical practice and stayed at it for a couple of decades before coming upon the idea of a cure for alcoholism. Seen through the lenses of his patented gold cure for alcohol addiction I think there is little room other than to see him as a quack1 (if not an uncommon one) in the history of medicine--he was however somewhat significant in this cure venture in that he was an early figure in describing alcoholism as a medical disease. People who stayed for weeks at one of the Leslie's cure institutes were weened away from drink and given treatments including the double chloride of gold tonic, something that was shown to be “27.55% alcohol plus ammonium chloride, aloin and tincture of cinchona but no gold”. The patients also received dozens of hypodermic injections which were shown to be combination of “sulfate of strychnine, atropine and boracic acid” --(Wikipedia)
Dr. Kelley ran a persuasive campaign, with bulging results, with over 90 franchised Kelley institutes by 1893 and gin-blossoming to over 200 soon afterwards (data from Wikipedia).
(Joe Nickell writes for the Center for Inquiry that "...the result of Dr Keeley’s medicines was to make patients experience fear, confusion, vomiting, and dizziness, among other ill effects" which may have induced or trained them into associating those symptoms with drinking. (See http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/historic_gold_cure_for_addiction/) The remedy/cure of course did not work--and so far as how this was supposed to work to cure alcoholism, I do not know. The only thing that evidently did work was restricting and then eliminating the consumption of alcohol at the clinics.
Kelley claimed huge success; after some time, there was a big difference of opinion on his success rates. It was finally admitted that a large percentage of the “cured “ alcoholics going through his clinics relapsed--though there was an enormous draw-back to this admission. The brilliant and diabolical move from the Institutes' part was to claim that those who were cured were cured even after relapse, as the return to drinking was a choice rather than the cured medical necessity.Redefining terms (and in this case, all terms) in language suitable to a specific goal is the penultimate defense before failure (the last line being simple denial).
The last Kelley Institute to close did only in 1966, back in the small town where it all started, in Dwight, Illinois.
The infallible, never-failing cure was said to also prove indispensable in curing tobacco and opium addiction.
Notes:
1. "A 1908 article in the Illinois Medical Journal stated that 'Leslie Keeley was a common, ordinary quack with a useless remedy which made good by advertising and catching suckers'."--Wikipedia
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