William Duncan Silkworth

William Duncan Silkworth (22 July 1873 to 22 March 1951) was an American physician and specialist in the treatment of alcoholism. Born in Brooklyn, he took a bachelor's degree at Princeton University, began as a pre-med student and came to specialise in neuropsychiatry, then graduated in medicine from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1899. He directed the Charles B. Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions in New York City in the 1930s and is estimated to have treated more than 40,000 alcoholics. William Griffith Wilson, a future co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was admitted to his hospital three times, and Silkworth encouraged him to see alcoholism as more than a moral weakness. In 1937 he published articles in the Medical Record proposing a physical disease model of alcoholism, and he wrote the chapter The Doctor's Opinion for the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He died at Towns Hospital after a heart attack.