From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   William Duncan Silkworth was born in Brooklyn in 1873, to parents William and   
   Isabelle Silkworth. William was the eldest of 3; he had a brother Russel and a   
   sister Mabel.   
      
   Silkworth attended Long Branch High School. Between 1892-1896, Silkworth   
   obtained a Bachelor's from Princeton.  Silkworth began his university studies   
   as a pre-med student, but quickly developed an interest and began to   
   specialize in neuropsychiatry.   
      
   Upon graduating from Princeton, Silkworth studied at Bellevue Hospital Medical   
   College beginning in 1896 and graduating with a Medical Degree in 1899 after   
   completing the 4-year program in 3 years. While interning at Bellevue   
   Hospital, Dr. Silkworth was    
   exposed to many alcoholics and doctors with expertise on alcoholism since   
   Bellevue was one of the only hospitals with a department specializing in the   
   treatment of alcoholism in the U.S. at the time.   
      
   Silkworth married Marie Antoinette Bennett in Manhattan in 1898. In 1909, his   
   wife gave birth to a son who lived for only six days. The couple would have no   
   other children, though they remained married all their lives.   
      
   During Dr. Silkworth's career, he is estimated to have treated more than   
   40,000 alcoholics and was regarded as one of the world's leading experts in   
   the field. In 1937, Dr. Silkworth published a pair of articles in the Medical   
   Record titled "Alcoholism    
   as a Manifestation of Allergy" and "Reclamation of the Alcoholic" wherein he   
   proposed a physical disease model of alcoholism and a psychotherapeutic   
   treatment method that induced patients to admit powerlessness over their   
   addiction and to adopt a new    
   moral psychology. In the latter paper, Dr. Silkworth describes five case   
   studies of patients that he had treated for alcoholism at the Towns Hospital;   
   in Case V, Dr. Silkworth describes the successful recovery of Bill Wilson who   
   was already in the early    
   stages of founding the organization that would come to be known as Alcoholics   
   Anonymous.   
      
   During 1938-1939, Dr. Silkworth wrote letters in support of Alcoholics   
   Anonymous which were included in a chapter titled "The Doctor's Opinion" in   
   the book Alcoholics Anonymous and helped to provide the nascent organization   
   with credibility. Crucially,    
   he described the powerlessness of alcoholism as an obsession of the mind that   
   compels one to drink and an allergy of the body that condemns one to go mad or   
   die. Dr. Silkworth further observed that alcoholics could recover if they   
   could obtain an    
   essential psychic change brought about with the aid of a "Higher Power."   
      
   Dr. Silkworth died at Towns Hospital in 1951, after suffering a heart attack.   
   He is buried at the Glenwood Cemetery in West Long Branch NJ.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Duncan_Silkworth   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)