The Discovery of an American Physician.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7177, 30 May 1891, Page 4

The Discovery of an American Physician.

* TEMPERANCE ORATORS AND PROHIBITIONISTS NO LONGER NKBDED. (_\ T <*t*i Yorh Sun.) Good news finds always willing ears and ready credence, but when a sanguine public is told that a judicious use of the hypodermic syringe for three weeks will banish completely the demon of intemperance from the land, it need not be wondered at if there is a little hesitation about accepting the glad tidings. But this is the millennium-hastening proclamation which comes to us from the West, and comeß backed by such interesting evidence that it demands our unrestricted attention. So convincing is the testimony in support of the value of the discovery that the Chicago Tribune was moved the other day to demand that the nen method of dealing with the appetite for narcotics be introduced in the public institutions of Chicago. No moro than local attention seems to have been attracted to the experiments which have been made during the past ten years by Dr Leslie Keeley at D wight, 111., until a record of 5000 cases had been made, and then it was announced that only five per cent of these had relapsed into intemperance. Now the hard drinkers of the West are beginning to talk about it and tho doctors are investigating, for there seems to be no secret about the remedies used. 81-CHLORIDE OP GOLD FOR DRUNKENNESS. Dr Keeley was an army surgeon during the war, and he has been since the head surgeon in the employ of the Chicago and Alton Bailroad. He has been axperimenting for eleven years in the treatment of the disease intemperance — for be it known he believes that dealing with the evil comes almost solely within the province of the physician and not in that of the exhorter or moralist. He sought for a remedy which would kill the germ.3 of an unnatural appetite for narcotics. Early in his researches he became convinced that bichloride of gold furnished the weapon for which he waa in search, but it was a long time before he discovered the best combination or vehicle with which to use it. Bichloride of gold has been for some years a favourite agent in the hands of bacteriologists, and some remarkable results have been obtained with it in a variety of ways It is only recently Dr Keeley says, that he haß learned to use it in the most effective f way. He administers the remedy both subcutaneously and through the stomach. ALL THE WHISKEY THEY WANT. Dwight, Illinois, is an interesting little village where no liquor can be obtained except at Dr Keeley's institute. Anybody j who goes there for treatment can get all I the good whiskey he wants from the ' Doctor's liberal demijohn, but, strangely | enough, he never calls for any after being I under treatment for three or four days. \ Dr Keeley's institution is not a hospital or I sanatarium. Victims of alcohol, opium, or other narcotics, who go there, find their own quarters in the village for the three weeks they are under treatment. They are , : expected to report at the institute four j times daily to be inoculated, and they must ! take a dose of the chloride of gold remedy ! internally every two hours. Otherwise j they occupy themselves as they ' pleaße. The inebriates are pretty sure to apply to I the Doctor for liberal rations of whiskey | the first day or two, and they get ag much ' as they crave. f "It's good whiskey, too, the Doctor, ! supplies," said a former patient whom a ! Sun reporter happened to meet the other j day, " the best I ever drank. But I didn't want any after the third day. I didn't j gain any abhorrence of liquor : I simply _ didn't crave it or feel the need of it. ' Better still, without any reaction or ; suffering from the abstinence, I began to regain a sense of manliness and in- ; dependence, which had been lacking for ; months. The courage and strength which ; came back made me feel like a new man. I Thero were thirty- five patients there when - I was, and I know they all felt the same 1 effects." j EABT TO CUEE A STEADY DRINKER. ; It iB an interesting paradox, so it iB eaid at Dr Keeley's institution, that the worse a i , man is the easier is he cured. In other : words, it is easier to cure an habitual < drunkard than a man who goes on i

leriodical sprees. The first individual, n medical parlance, is afflicted with " ilcoholiam, and the second with dipsonania. Dr Keeley admita that if a lipson-aniac is treated with chloride of •old during an iuterval of sobriety the iraving may return at the accustomed I iime, when it will be uecesßary to repe.'it : ;he treatment in order thoroughly to \ eradicate tho appetite. The Doctor's de_- • iription of the dipsomaniac's case as dis;inguished from that of the ordinary Irunkard is interesting. He says : "We find that a man remains sober, j iteady, upright, and industrious for a ' pear or more, when, suddenly, be com-uit-nceß to drink, nnd, alter _* aebauch of several days, and sometimes weeks, ho atops and remains sober for -mother year or more. If you follow that man ou through the yeara, you will notice that the intervals between his sprees becomo shorter every year, uutil he falls into the everyday use of stimulants, aud sinks into the grave a sodden, beastful drunkard. Some men have a spree every two weeks, and the periods vary in different cases from weeks to yeare. The dipsomaniac is always aware of an impending attack of the disease. It doo3 not strike hini suddenly ; it give 3 him full and fair warning of the danger ahead. For two or three days previous he will bo languid, restless, troubled with loss of appetite, and an intense uneasiness pervadin_r every movement. Then follows tbo terrible debauch, ending in sickness, misery, Bhame, remorse, and a loathing of alcohol in all ice forme." IOWA'S SOCIETY OF EX-DRTFNKARDB. A great many of Dr Keeley's patients have come from the prohibition State of lowa. If the evidence adduced goes for anything, it show 3 that the evil of intemperance exists in lowa in far worse form than in any so-called free-liquor State in the Union. At all events, those who firßt tried the internal gold plating sent so many others that Dr Keeley established a branch institute in the State. This recently led to one of the most extraordinary gatherings at Des Moines ever chronicled. It was no less than a drunkards', or rather ex-druukards', reunion and banquet, at which tho Mayor and other prominent citizens were entertained as guests. About a hundred gentlemen from all parts of the State organized the lowa Keeley League, and arranged to hold yearly reunions to celebrate their release from the bonds of narcoticß in various forms. The reunion waa held last month, and the Des Moine3 Capital printed a long report; of what was said and done their. The speech of the President, Editor Eobert Harris of the Missouri VaUey Times, contained some interesting comments upon the temperance problem, which will hardly be relished by prohibitionists or total abstinence exhorters. He said : "The city in which I live is not avery bad city in the drinking line — just an average prohibition city ; but, since I made my pilgrimage to D wight, I have sont thirty-two of the boya to that place or to De 3 Moines to be cured, and I am proud to Bay this evening that they are all sticking to the faith, and aro to-day as sober men as can be found in lowa. " I am not egotistical — that is, not more so than the average run of newspaper men — but I believe that my cure has done more good to the temperance cause in the city in which I live, and in Western lowa, than all the temperance lectures ever delivered there. I was known as a drinking man, and now I am known a3 one of the Keel ey patients, one who was thoroughly cured; and hundreds of my friends have gone and done likewise. Although I do not wear the blue or red ribbon, I believe I have been a temperauce worker, and I'm willing to back my work against the longhaired howler for prohibition, and I have no fear for the result when the returns are all iv aud the back townships have been counted. " What I most want to say 13 that the state should take thia treatment in hand. The state provides a home for the blind, a home for the insane, where the poor unfortunates may be cured, a home for tho feeble minded, a home for the decrepit old veteran, and why should the State not , provide an institution for the cure of the unfortunatos who have been mastered by the desire for liquor ? The iiquor habitue is afflicted with a disease worse than insanity. He has a chance for his life in the Keeley cure, and why Bhould not the Stato furnish the institute ? If the State owned the institution for the cure of drunkards there would be no need of prohibition laws, for when a man has gone through the Keeley treatment he ceases buying liquor, and if all drinkers will quit buying the saloons will soon close up without the interference of law. Then the prohibition millennium will have arrived, and J. Ellen Foster and the W. C. T. TJ. can put on their little crowns and join the gang on the other shore, for their work will have been finished and they can go over and claim their reward." There were other speeches by men who had had no desire for liquor since submitting to Dr Keeley's inoculations, some of them several years before j and then this oddest of all temperance meetings came to an end. One fact cited in proof of the value of the new discovery may cause some slight apprehension on the part of the travelling public, but it iB interesting. It is said that the Chicago and North-western Eailroad is offering passes to Dwight to such of their employees as need treatment, and that men who have been blacklisted on account of intemperance are taken back on certificate of treatment by tho new remedy. AN ANTIDOTE FOR THE OPIUM CUKSE. Even more interesting than the effect of the treatment on drunkards is what the new remedy does for the slaves of opium. It is well understood by most people that tho victim of the opium habit is a far more hopeless caso than is the immoderate drinker. Dr Keeley has recently published a book upon the use of opium, which contains some startling statements regarding the extent of the abuse ofthe drug in this country. He argues not only that the practice of medicine has changed wonderfully during recent years, but that diseases have cuauged, that is, that the human frame suffers nowadays from a different class of diseases than formerly.