IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB700353486

“We Belt the World”: Dr. Leslie E. Keeley’s “Gold Cure” and the Medicalization of Addiction in 1890s London (2021)

Hickman, Timothy Alton (Author)

Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume: 95
Issue: 2
Pages: 198-226
Publication date: 2021

DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2021.0030

URI: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/802297

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Public health Cross-national interaction Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment Medicalization 19th century London (England)

Dr. Leslie E. Keeley (1832–1900), proprietor of the “Gold Cure” for alcohol and drug habits, was the world’s best-known addiction cure doctor at the end of the nineteenth century. Vast numbers of people claimed that his treatment worked, but his reliance on a secret cure brought derision from mainstream medicine. This article uses unpublished archival sources to examine the 1892 opening of Keeley’s London franchise. The British medical establishment, particularly that element of it led by Dr. Norman S. Kerr and the Society for the Study of Inebriety, was outraged at the American clinic’s presence in London. Nonetheless, the Keeley Institute prospered. London’s mainstream professionals did not have the cultural authority to impose their assessment of the Keeley Institute over the popular language of “cure” that followed the Keeley phenomenon around the globe. This article argues that despite this apparent struggle between two ways of conceptualizing and treating addiction, the ultimate winner of the debate was medicalization itself. Whichever therapy a patient chose, mainstream or market, both understood addiction to be a medical problem, requiring a medical solution.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB700353486

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Michele Rotunda; (2021)
A Drunkard's Defense: Alcohol, Murder, and Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (/p/isis/citation/CBB760012973/)

Book Kristin Hussey; (2021)
Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880–1914 (/p/isis/citation/CBB460048744/)

Article Miller, Edgar; (2013)
“Pauper Lunatics and their Treatment,” by Joshua Harrison Stallard (1870) (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320339/)

Book David A. Guba Jr; (2020)
Taming Cannabis: Drugs and Empire in Nineteenth-Century France (/p/isis/citation/CBB831549564/)

Article Guillaume Linte; Paul-Arthur Tortosa; (2023)
“The Most Unhealthy Spots in the World”: Thinking, Dwelling In, and Shaping Pathogenic Environments (/p/isis/citation/CBB003763861/)

Article Arnold, David J.; (2012)
The Medicalization of Poverty in Colonial India (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213112/)

Thesis Rintala, Taina Marjut; (2004)
Vanhuskuvat ja vanhustenhuollon muotoutuminen 1850-luvulta 1990-luvulle (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562138/)

Thesis Schuster, David G.; (2006)
Neurasthenic Nation: The Medicalization of Modernity in the United States, 1869--1920 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561482/)

Article Patrick Kirkham; (2017)
‘The Line Between Intervention and Abuse’ – Autism and Applied Behaviour Analysis (/p/isis/citation/CBB923307084/)

Article Kikuchi, Yoshiyuki; (2012)
Cross-National Odyssey of a Chemist: Edward Divers at London, Galway and Tokyo (/p/isis/citation/CBB001210770/)

Book White, Daniel E.; (2013)
From Little London to Little Bengal: Religion, Print, and Modernity in Early British India, 1793--1835 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001552145/)

Article Boyer-Xambeu, Marie-Thérèse; Deleplace, Ghislain; Gillard, Lucien; (2013)
Les arbitrages sur les changes et les métaux précieux entre Londres, Paris et Hambourg (1821--1873): les serpents bimétalliques (/p/isis/citation/CBB001510207/)

Article Brian Lancaster; (2015)
Jean-Baptiste Say's First Visit to England (1785/6) (/p/isis/citation/CBB797940838/)

Book Cantor, G. N.; Cantor, Geoffrey N.; (2013)
The Great Exhibition: A Documentary History (/p/isis/citation/CBB001550809/)

Book Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen; (2021)
Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives (/p/isis/citation/CBB570080807/)

Article Jennifer Wallis; (2018)
A Home or a Gaol? Scandal, Secrecy, and the St James’s Inebriate Home for Women (/p/isis/citation/CBB355616622/)

Article Carlos Francisco Almeida de Oliveira; Carlos Evandro Martins Eulálio; Viriato Campelo; Paulo Dalgalarrondo; Tom Dening; (2016)
A historiographic study of psychiatric treatments in Brazil: mentalism and organicism from 1830 to 1859 (/p/isis/citation/CBB284956374/)

Article Nye, Robert A.; (2003)
The Evolution of the Concept of Medicalization in the Late Twentieth Century (/p/isis/citation/CBB000300897/)

Thesis Gangloff, Amy Beth; (2006)
Medicalizing the Automobile: Public Health, Safety, and American Culture,1920--1967 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001560643/)

Book Vigarello, Georges; (2013)
The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity (/p/isis/citation/CBB001551002/)