Leslie Keeley

Leslie Keeley was an American physician born in Potsdam, New York in 1836 who died in 1900 and originated the Keeley Cure for alcohol and opium addiction. He graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1863, served as a surgeon with the Union Army, and afterwards practised in Dwight, Illinois, where in 1880 he opened a sanatorium for people addicted to alcohol and opium. He declared that alcoholism was a disease he could cure, and treated it with injections of a secret preparation he called double chloride of gold. Chemical analysis showed that the tonic held alcohol, ammonium chloride, aloin and cinchona but no gold. From 1890 he sold franchises, and by 1893 there were 92 Keeley Institutes in the United States, Canada and Mexico, later more than 200 including some in Europe. Medical critics called the method quackery, yet he is remembered as one of the first to treat alcoholism as a medical problem. The last Keeley Institute, at Dwight, closed in 1966.