Methods of Treatment of Alcoholism throughout History

As views toward alcoholism have changed throughout history, so have the means attempted to treat alcohol dependence. Today, medications, psychotherapy, and attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are the primary means to help alcoholics.
But past treatment methods were very different.

These have ranged from such aversive methods as putting a worm or insect in the alcoholic's drink to cause revulsion to alcohol to advertisements for various potions wives could secretly place in their husbands' drinks to cause them to stop drinking.

These were usually substances that led to copious vomiting, such as syrup of ipecac, and were dangerous. But at that time, drugs were freely sold without the constraints of the Food and Drug Administration or other federal government rules and regulations.

The Keeley Method

One extremely popular past method of treatment for alcoholism was the "Keeley Cure," or Bi-Chloride of Gold Cure developed by Dr. Leslie E. Keeley. It did not work at all other than with those who responded to the placebo effect, or the strong belief that it would work because of extreme confidence in the drug.

There have been many different sham treatments for alcoholism, but this treatment is described because so many people (as many as 500,000 alcoholics from 1880–1920) bought into it. Dr. Keeley became a wealthy man as a result of his so-called cure.

Keeley was an Irishman who had relocated to the United States. He became a doctor and was a surgeon in the Union Army of the Civil War. Keeley developed his chemical compound in Illinois, and he boasted in 1879, "Drunkenness is a disease and I can cure it." Keeley believed that alcoholism was caused by toxins from alcohol, cocaine, tobacco, and opiates, and he said that his compound would rid the body of these toxins and transform the alcoholic into a sober person. According to author Sarah W. Tracy, Keeley provided four injections daily to his inpatients.

He refused to divulge his specific formula to anyone, insisting that it worked. Patients came from all over the United States for the Keeley treatment, which lasted a month. Keeley claimed a 95 percent success rate, a very dubious claim.

Some doctors of the time waggishly said that if it worked 95 percent of the time, that meant 95 percent of the patients died.

Some people believed they knew the ingredients of the Keeley cure. Tracy wrote of a Keeley facility located in Canada: "Three or four times a day, men lined up in the main building (called the 'shot tower') for their hypodermic injections of strychnine (supposedly mixed with incidental amounts of gold and sodium chloride). Every two hours, patients took a dram of tonic (called 'the dope'), which was said to contain atropine, strychnine, cinchona, glycerin, and gold and sodium chloride. One had to possess a strong constitution to withstand the treatment."