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Sunday Omaha
World-Herald Magazine March 25, 1990
In The
1890's, Alcoholics lined up for the Keeley Gold Cure
By Yale Huffman (The author, is a Denver, Colo., attorney from Broken Bow. Neb.)
Clearing
a century's worth of debris out of the old Clifton Hotel
in Blair, Neb., the Peter Sorensen family was restoring the
place for operation as an apartment house Mrs. Sorensen riffled
through a stack of yellowing papers dating from the 1890s.
"Listen to this," she called to her husband.
Sorensen
paused to listen. Mrs Sorensen read aloud:
"Absolutely
reliable! There is neither doubt, experiment or uncertainty in
this matter. We cure everybody who comes to us far treatment!
"If you desire to be rescued, saved, completely cured and
restored, redeemed from the curse of drink, come to us and we
will cure you!"
The
Sorensens were discovering that they owned all that remained of
the Keeley Institute, Blair's main attraction 100 years ago. The
place was built in 1891, sitting across Front Street from the
depot. Alcoholics by the hundreds, finding the Nineties not so
gay, found refuge here for the salvation promised by the Keeley
Cure.
The
Sorensens studied the pages of the advertisement and calculated
the revenues. Rates were $25 a week, plus $5 for meals. Two
people were assigned to each of the 25 rooms. Thus, 50 guests
paying $30 a week produced $1,500 a week in revenue.
What
was the attraction?
The
gold cure. The answer was in the fragile papers.
"By the use of Double Chloride of Gold remedies discovered
and perfected by Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, the liquor, opium,
morphine and tobacco habits are completely and permanently cured
... The remedies used by us mingle with and disinfect the blood,
and totally destroy every vestige of the effects of dissipation,
leaving the patient sound and healthy, giving a remarkable
increase in nerve, power, vigor and strength.
"We
give references of thousands who have been cured. Communications
strictly confidential."
Records at the Washington County Historical Association indicate
men from across the country came to Blair for treatment.
"Some
were benefited permanently," said a May 1919 account in the
Blair Tribune, "a few only temporarily, and others went
right back to the arms of old King Alcohol as soon as they met
him after being turned out as cured."
Another
story in the archives, "Lest We Forget - A History of
Washington County," by John A. Rhoades, went further:
"One
of their rules in the cure was to allow the patients all they
wanted to drink. Drunks could be found in the gutters and
staggering down the streets at all times of day and night."
Al
Dunning of Omaha, a former owner of the hotel, remembers peeling
some wallpaper off an old notice painted on a second-floor
bathroom wall:
"Those
Patients able to walk are requested to use the water closet on
the first floor."
Records
at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the National
Library of Medicine indicate the Blair facility was one of 118
gold cure franchises scattered throughout America and abroad at
the height of the fad. Annual revenues passed $1.5 million.
Founder
Leslie Enraught Keeley was an entrepreneur in the Horatio Alger
tradition, with the flair of P.T. Barnum. Some said Keeley was
born in Ireland; others said New York, in 1832.
Keeley
wandered America as a youth, earned a medical degree from Rush
Medical College in Chicago, and served briefly as an assistant
surgeon in the Union Army during the dosing weeks of the Civil
War. In 1866 he was practicing medicine in the village of
Dwight, III.
Dr. Keeley delved into the writings of the ancient mystics.
Later he would recall the experience.
"During
my research into the leading authorities," he wrote,
"I met with a quotation from a work by Paracelsus, written
at the close of the fifteenth century, in which it was claimed
that Gold, the King of Metals, would be found in the coming ages
a specific for diseases of the nervous system, like that of
alcoholism.
"Following
this little ray of light, which has threaded its way down
through the centuries, I eagerly sought the sunlight of truth.
My experiments were made in various salts of Gold used in
medicine and, after countless efforts, the Double Chloride of
Gold was discovered to be the remedy sought, and thus my remedy
was brought into the world."
Paracelsus
did teach his Swiss students that "gold, the quintessence
of the celestial fire, can remove the impurities of man and make
him grow anew." He prescribed that it be administered under
certain conjunctions of the planets.
As
recently as 1964 one pharmaceutical company was offering
injections of gold sodium thiomalte for arthritis patients, but
with the disclaimer that its "mode of action is
unknown" and the warning that adverse toxic reactions
"can be severe and even fatal."
Neither
Keeley nor the local pharmacist who helped him concoct the gold
cure would disclose the formula. It was injected by hypodermic,
requiring a physician qualified to wield the needle.
For guaranteed cures to take at home, twin bottles labeled
"Keeley Treatment for Inebriety" were $9 a pair. The
20 percent alcohol content was declared on the label.
The
rest of the formula remained a secret until critics and rivals
published their analyses: water, glycerine, willow bark, ginger,
hops, coca, aloes, atropine, pilocarpine, apomorphine and
strychnia. The apomorphine and coca were included to make the
patient feel good if the stiff dose of alcohol did not suffice.
A
modem scholar offers his analysis of the gold cure. Professor H.
Wayne Morgan in his book, "Drugs in America,"
concludes that "whatever the precise nature of the
compounds, they clearly relied on tranquilization and antagonism
for effect. Some relaxed and stupefied the patient while others
created a temporary distaste for alcohol ... As for gold, its
presence, if any, was hard to detect, and it had no therapeutic
value, but had strong symbolic appeal."
Morgan speculates that whatever gold may have originally been
included was later discarded because of adverse side-effects.
Dr. Jeffrey Walder, a clinical psychologist in Maryland, is more
succinct. "There is no cure so preposterous that it won't
work for somebody."
Dr.
Keeley announced in 1893, "We will fill no further orders
for home treatment for less than a full set of five bottles,
that number having been found necessary for a complete cure.
Price $22.50."
The
hypodermic gold cure was administered to patients from jealously
guarded supplies. Layers of red, white and blue liquid were
visible in the ampules containing the mix, which came to be
known as the barber pole.
OUR TIMES DAILY the men lined up in shirt sleeves for the
ceremony which they called "passing through the line."
Something in the mix left a faint yellow tinge at the puncture,
as if to verify the gold content.
The
few women who came to Keeley got their shots in the privacy of
their rooms, segregated from the men's quarters. Patients were
allowed all the whiskey they wanted inside the institute, but
anyone who drank outside was discharged, with no refund. The
remedy included a substance to produce acute nausea when alcohol
was ingested by the patient.
Rudy
Fick, the 83-year-old retired sheriff of Washington County,
recalls stories of violent reactions by patients in downtown
Blair.
Another
Neblaskan, reminiscing at last year's AA Old Timers banquet in
Omaha, recalled his own discharge from the Keeley Cure which was
operating in Council Bluffs in the 1930s, Arriving home in
O'Neill, he met up with an old drinking buddy.
"Never
again!" he vowed. "Never a drink?" asked the
friend. "Never the cure!" came the reply.
Keeley
therapists regarded a "cure" as detoxification,
withdrawal from alcohol and discharge. Many patients finished
their month of treatment in a state of euphoria.
Beyond the mood-enhancing drugs in their medicine they had been
well-fed, exercised, bathed, massaged and emotionally nourished
by constant encouragement from fellow alcoholics. Many went home
in buoyant spirits, cured by Keeley standards.
Dr.
Keeley declared that any relapses were due to the patients'
failures to follow directions.
"I cannot paralyze the arm that would raise the fatal glass
to the lips," he warned.
The
Gay Nineties suffered an epidemic of alcoholism that swept
across America and the Keeley Cure caught the wave on the rise.
Commencing with the first franchise in Des Moines in 1t190, the
gold cure was offered in 28 cities within a year. The franchises
peaked at 118 in 1893. By the end of the century, Dr. Keeley
claimed 400,000 cures, with a recovery rate of 95 percent.
The
Midlands were fertile ground for Keeley. At one time in Nebraska
there were gold cures in Lincoln, Omaha, O'Neill and Grand
Island. The 1891 incorporators of the Blair franchise included
Dr. B.F. Monroe to assure medical endorsement.
Dr.
Keeley introduced the disease concept of alcoholism and won
endorsements from the temperance societies. The Chicago Tribune
checked out his claims and applauded the results. The Army
assigned alcoholics [o him for treatment. He spoke as an
evangelist from pulpits throughout the land. The Minneapolis
Tribune called him "the patron saint of drunkards."
Contemporaries
spoke of his personal magnetism but described him as "a
born autocrat with a combative temper."
It
was during the brief years of ascendancy that Dr. Keeley was to
enjoy his moment of triumph. Returning from a franchise mission
to Europe he emerged from the depot in Dwight to discover his
route home lined with employees, patients and alumni of the
Keeley Cure.
Nine
hundred men and women stood along , the curbs in silent tribute.
"My
God!" exclaimed the doctor. "What a sight!"
A
patient standing nearby responded, "As our earthly savior,
it is your rightful due! " By this time, many physicians
couldn't stand Dr. Keeley's prosperity. Professional circles
buzzed with protest. The flamboyant gold cure ads roused the
Illinois State Board of Health in 1881, and Dr. Keeley's medical
license was revoked. Thereafter, he referred to his patients in
Dwight as students.
Detractors
in the medical societies of Boston, Chicago, Memphis and San
Francisco went on record with criticism of Dr. Keeley's methods
and his secrecy about the formula. Unethical, said the critics.
Dr. Keeley's strenuous defense of his right to profit from his
discovery, as any inventor might, did not soothe his medical
peers.
"He
dominated everybody and made them do as he wanted them to
do," recalled an early associate. "If they would not
do it, he would make them do it or have nothing to do with them
at all. That was Keeley's character."
The
transcripts of medical society proceedings also quote defenders
who argued that, after all, conventional medicine was doing
nothing for alcoholics and Dr. Keeley did have some successes
where others had failed.
Nevertheless,
his estrangement from his medical colleagues widened as his
business prospered.
Speedy
growth carried risks. The rapid expansion of Keeley franchises
brought problems. Not all investors were altruistic and the
profit motive tended to dominate the treatment. Personnel
problems multiplied within the institutes. The binges of former
patients brought derision.
Legal
problems arose in the mid-1890s. In Blair alone, the Keeley
Institute was sued by four people within one seven-month period.
The
Blair Pilot in 1899 reported that "a former patient was
attempting to sue Manager Eller on charges that the Keeley
method guaranteed cure for the liquor habit and he had not
stayed cured."
Patients around America were demanding refunds or filing claims
for injurious side affects of the injections. The International
Medical Magazine featured an article titled "Insanity
Following the Keeley Treatment."
Keeley
alumni, disturbed by the failures within their ranks, came to
realize that something more than detoxification was needed to
stay sober.
Recalling the communion formed when passing through the
line," some graduates formed a society to prolong the
fellowship. They founded the Keeley League to refer new
prospects to the various institutes and to welcome them home
afterward. Alumni reunions at each facility attracted grateful
alumni and their families. Wives formed a women's auxiliary.
National
conventions of the Keeley League drew thousands. Bands played
the Keeley Grand March. The festivities ran like revival
meetings, with Christian overtones. Prominent men gave personal
testimony and gained fleeting celebrity as victors over Demon
Rum.
At
its height, the Keeley League claimed 370 chapters nationwide.
"Group threrapy" was a term yet to be invented, but
30,000 members were practicing it in the 1990s. Their common
talisman - the tin cup chained to the town pump in Dwight - was
their symbol. Each wore a lapel pin fashioned of a capital K
enclosed within a miniature golden horseshoe.
But
for every sober graduate there were more conspicuous slippers.
They were expelled from the fellowship and their notoriety
disillusioned the public. The cure business fell off as the
century moved toward its close and Dr. Keeley retired to a home
he built in Los Angeles.
Dr.
Keeley said he had left the field of medicine. "Without
severing connection with the profession," he wrote,
"the tie in time fell to pieces."
He
died of heart failure in Los Angeles on Feb. 21, 1900, a
millionaire. The Keeley League, bereft of its leader, did not
survive him long.
His widow endowed the Christian Scientists with much of the
wealth mined by the gold cure. They left no children.
The various Keeley Institutes dropped into insolvency and
dissolution in the years that followed.
The Blair facility became the Clifton Hotel and the cure
operation moved to Omaha. It was still advertising in The
World-Herald in 1909, but soon faded away. The Grand Island
franchise was the last Nebraska survivor, closing its doors in
1918.
Prohibition
arrived, but some patients were still referred to the Keeley
Institute by the Veterans Administration. The home office in
Dwight persevered, striving for survival with treatments for
cocaine, morphine, opium, heroin, tobacco and nervous disorders.
By
the time liquor was legal again in 1933, Alcoholics Anonymous
was just around the corner, offering recovery with no dues or
fees.
By
1950, the Keeley patient load had dwindled to 511. The
management in Dwight offered its rooms for AA meetings and the
Keeley Cure was abandoned altogether in 1966.
Morgan,
in an epilogue to the Keeley saga in "Drugs in
America," wrote: "Had not Keeley begun with the gold
nostrum, and later been committed to the defense of his formula
and his own ego, he might truly have become an acknowledged
prophet. His method merged self-help and group therapy, which
were the real basis for his frequent successes, and precursors
of the AA program which was to emerge later."
Today
in Blair, the Keeley Institute, restored and rechristened the
Landmark Inn, offers living quarters to new generations. |
