Olympia’s New ‘Keeley Cure’ Promised to Break Drink and Opium Habits in Three Weeks
Dr. Watt opens a Keeley Institute in the Union block, touting a round-the-clock regimen of medicine, hypodermic injections and baths — and applications are already arriving from across Puget Sound.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Dr. Watt, who is the local physician for the Keeley Institute in this city, returned yesterday from Dwight, Ill., where he went to receive instructions in the application of the treatment. When leaving here, he was slightly skeptical as to the real value of the treatment; but his visit has completely freed his mind of all doubt, he believing that facts are more substantial than theory. He was much surprised at the institute at Dwight, and the effective manner in which it is producing so much good work.
The medicines for the use of the institute are now here and the institute opened today, in the Union block, where all patients will be received. Dr. Watt made the first treatment today.
The patient takes medicine internally every two hours day and night while awake. In addition, the patient is required to report four times a day at the institute and receive hypodermic injections in the left arm. Besides, baths are prescribed at least twice each week. These form the most important factors of the treatment. Three weeks’ treatment are necessary to cure the opium or liquor habit.
Already applications are being received from outside points. There are two from Seattle, one from Tacoma, one from Oaksdale, two from Whatcom, one from Aberdeen, and about four residing in Olympia. Inquiries are being received continually.
“Three weeks’ treatment are necessary to cure the opium or liquor habit.”
The Keeley institutes were the era’s franchised addiction clinics, selling hope to people with alcohol and opioid dependence long before modern treatment standards existed. Today’s debates over rehab fraud, medication-assisted treatment and who gets care echo the same questions about promise, proof and profit.
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