Despite the lack of medical consensus regarding alcoholism as a disease, many people readily accept the concept of addiction as a clinical as well as a social disorder. An alcoholic is a victim of social circumstance and genetic destiny. Although one might imagine that this dual approach is a reflection of today's enlightened and sympathetic society, historian Sarah Tracy discovers that efforts to medicalize alcoholism are anything but new. Alcoholism in America tells the story of physicians, politicians, court officials, and families struggling to address the danger of excessive alcohol consumption at the turn of the century. Beginning with the formation of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates in 1870 and concluding with the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, this study examines the effect of the disease concept on individual drinkers and their families and friends, as well as the ongoing battle between policymakers and the professional medical community for jurisdiction over alcohol problems. Tracy captures the complexity of the political, professional, and social negotiations that have characterized the alcoholism field both yesterday and today. Tracy weaves American medical history, social history, and the sociology of knowledge into a narrative that probes the connections among reform movements, social welfare policy, the specialization of medicine, and the social construction of disease. Her insights will engage all those interested in America's historic and current battles with addiction.

Opened during the Civil War in 1864, the New York State Inebriate Asylum in Binghampton was the first medically directed addiction treatment centre in the US. This book provides a lively account of this pioneering facility and its charismatic founder, Dr Joseph Edward Turner.

The inebriate asylum movement of the 19th and early 20th century was guided by a dystopian vision which sought to incarcerate all drinkers until they were cured, and to incarcerate incurable inebriates for life. This plan to create a nationwide chain of state-run inebriate asylums to rival the insane asylums of the era, which was promoted by the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, ended in abject failure. Few inebriate asylums were ever established, and those that were established did not last long. Many were shot through with political corruption and graft. Moreover, no state government was willing to pass a law to incarcerate drinkers indefinitely, perhaps for life. Most states never built an inebriate asylum or passed a law to commit inebriates to specialized inebriate institutions, for the few states which did pass such laws, the typical commitment was six months or one year. A rival movement of the same era sought to establish inebriate homes rather than asylums. Inebriate homes were run on the honor system and sought to cure with kindness and a client-centered approach which foreshadows Rogerian Therapy. Inebriate homes had more success than inebriate asylums; the Boston Washingtonian Home was in existence for more than a century. This book tells the story of the government-run and the non-profit addiction treatment facilities which were founded prior to the Repeal of Prohibition in 1933: inebriate asylums, homes, and farms, as well as the municipal narcotic clinics which dispensed morphine to addicts, the Federal Narcotic Farms at Lexington and Fort Worth, and the alcoholic ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This book also discusses the close ties between the temperance movement and addiction treatment in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the automaton theory of inebriety, which presages today's hijacked brain theory. This book also discusses the genesis of the 12-step Minnesota Model at the State Inebriate Farm at Willmar, the introduction and disastrous ending of Synanon-based therapeutic communities at the Lexington Narcotic Farm, and the introduction of methadone programs at Bellevue and at the Boston Washingtonian Hospital. Groundbreaking studies of opiates, marijuana, barbiturates, alcohol, naloxone, and LSD conducted at the Lexington Narcotic Farm are also covered, as is the research at Bellevue Hospital on Korsakoff's Syndrome and the protective effect of vitamin B1.