This book tells the story of the huge addiction treatment industry which flourished in the United States between 1890 and the advent of Prohibition in 1920. The story begins in Russia in 1886, where a number of doctors discovered a relatively effective pharmacological treatment for alcoholism. Although this Russian discovery was published in countless major English language medical journals, it was entirely ignored by the US addiction experts of the day, who eschewed pharmacological treatments, and instead preferred to lock people up in inebriate asylums where they could be subjected to religious coercion. However, an obscure railroad physician and patent medicine salesman named Leslie E. Keeley, who lived in the dusty prairie town of Dwight, Illinois, read about the Russian treatment in a medical journal and decided to give it a try. Much to his surprise, the Russian treatment proved highly effective, and, by 1891, Dr. Keeley was treating upwards of a thousand patents a day at the Keeley Institute in Dwight. Keeley was a salesman and a bit of a Barnum; he always claimed that he had invented the cure himself after decades of painstaking research and he called it the Gold Cure, claiming that his secret ingredient was gold. Of course, there was no gold in the gold cure other than the gold which lined Keeley's pockets. However, the treatment was relatively effective, and by 1893 there were over 100 Keeley Institutes operating in the United States and abroad, and hundreds of copycats were operating imitation gold cure institutes. The Keeley Gold Cure was even adopted by the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and the US Army. The Keeley treatment took 28 days and required hypodermic injections four times a day for the entire period. On the other hand, the Gatlin Institutes which opened in 1902 and the Neal Institutes which opened in 1909 used a form of aversion treatment and advertised themselves as three-day liquor cures. Competition between the gold cures and the three-day liquor cures in the first two decades of the 20th century was fierce and intense. Then, as the United States entered World War One in 1917, the demand for addiction treatment suddenly dried up for a variety of reasons, and the majority of these proprietary cure institutes had shut down before the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, although the parent Keeley Institute in Dwight remained in operation until 1966. This book contains the never-before-told tale of how these proprietary treatment institutes grew into a huge industry, flourished, then finally faded away as the United States entered World War One. Part One of this book covers the Keeley Institutes, Dipsocura, the Bedal Institutes, the McKanna liquor cure, the Wherrell gold cure, and the Hagey Cure. Part Two of this book covers the Morrell Cure, the National Bichloride of Gold Institutes, the Oppenheimer Institutes, the Tyson Vegetable Cure, the Willow Bark Institutes, the Telfair Sanitarium, the Connelley Cure, the Murray Institutes, the Gatlin Institutes, the Neal Institutes, the S. B. Collins Cure, and the D'Unger Cure. Part Two also contains appendices discussing strychnine, belladonna alkaloids, "jag cure" laws, and more.

How American respectability has been built by maligning those who don't make the grade How did Americans come to think of themselves as respectable members of the middle class? Was it just by earning a decent living? Or did it require something more? And if it did, what can we learn that may still apply? The quest for middle-class respectability in nineteenth-century America is usually described as a process of inculcating positive values such as honesty, hard work, independence, and cultural refinement. But clergy, educators, and community leaders also defined respectability negatively, by maligning individuals and groups—“misfits”—who deviated from accepted norms. Robert Wuthnow argues that respectability is constructed by “othering” people who do not fit into easily recognizable, socially approved categories. He demonstrates this through an in-depth examination of a wide variety of individuals and groups that became objects of derision. We meet a disabled Civil War veteran who worked as a huckster on the edges of the frontier, the wife of a lunatic who raised her family while her husband was institutionalized, an immigrant religious community accused of sedition, and a wealthy scion charged with profiteering. Unlike respected Americans who marched confidently toward worldly and heavenly success, such misfits were usually ignored in paeans about the nation. But they played an important part in the cultural work that made America, and their story is essential for understanding the “othering” that remains so much a part of American culture and politics today.