The Minister, the Miracle Cure, and Olympia's War on Drink

"Salvation by Science" was the subject of Rev. Napoleon Hoagland's discourse at Tacoma Hall last evening. He said intelligent faith and true science assist each other. Faith in the answer to prayer for the cure of plague and famine is dying out, but faith in the reliability and wholesomeness of God's laws of life and health is growing from more to more. Famine is losing its terrors in civilized countries because people are learning to pray for daily bread by planting good seed in good soil.

To co-operate with nature's forces — God's forces, if you please — for the service of man ought to be considered a religious service. The old monks indeed taught that "to work is to pray," and Jesus said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." People have mistakenly supposed that God was jealous of man's power and wished to keep man weak and ignorant. But the story of the tower of Babel — which represented God as being fearful lest man should force an entrance into God's special domain against His will — we read as a fable.

It is true that it was once considered a trespass on God's special rights to destroy, when He pleased, for people to put lightning rods on their houses. But people today do not think it displeasing to God to use electricity as a servant. Nearly all the great discoveries which have added to man's knowledge or power have at first met with fierce opposition. New and more enlightened methods of treating diseases have not been an exception. Dr. Jenner's discovery of the value of vaccination as a preventative of the more virulent forms of smallpox is a case to the point.

Eleven years ago an obscure physician in an obscure Illinois town thought he had discovered a reliable cure for drunkenness. Of course it was a different method from any of those which had hitherto been employed. There were no lectures, no exhortations, no emotional excitement, no pledges to be signed, no religious creed to be subscribed to. Neither was there anything of the prison or asylum treatment in the method. But the doctor was wise enough to proceed cautiously, for he knew how slow people were to accept new ideas, even in regard to better methods of curing disease. His first patient he had to hire to take the treatment. But it was a success.

Try to imagine the doctor's feelings when it was practically demonstrated that he possessed the most reliable cure for the most destructive, most degrading and most widespread disease of civilization. It must have seemed that he held the power of a demi-god in his hands. All the more reason to guard it well. Instead of advertising the cure broadcast, he let the cured patients do that.

Today there are nearly one thousand patients in Dr. Keeley's institute. Ten thousand drunkards have been healed of their infirmity by the treatment. Sixteen branch institutions have been established in as many states, the plan being to have one in each state. This will bring it within the easy reach of all. Our first impulse is to criticise Doctor Keeley for not giving his secret to the medical profession or publishing it to the world. But it represents his life work, and he is entitled to a fair remuneration for its benefits. He is probably taking the best method of bringing it into public confidence and practical use that he could adopt. Instead of trusting it to incompetent hands, instead of putting it at the mercy of people whose prejudices may be against it, he entrusts it only to those who receive special training in the use of the method in the parent institute. That he does not fill the newspapers with advertisements after the patent-medicine style shows that he is not in the business merely for the money he can make out of it.

One of our first prejudices against the method is that we fear its influence will be immoral. In the first place, it proposes to do by medicine what we have been in the habit of thinking ought to be done by moral resolutions and moral integrity. But what if moral failure is itself a result of disease? Another prejudice is that it seems to be too easy a way for the drunkard to reform. He does not have to shed any tears or endure any great anguish or suffering in order to get cured. It is very hard for many of us to give up a belief in a brimstone hell for other people. But suppose you ask the drunkard. I think he will say he has had punishment enough already, and he ought to know.

Then, too, it has seemed sacrilegious or not quite the thing that the business of curing drunkards should pay ten per cent. But the business of making drunkards pays even more than that on the money invested, and we tolerate it all along our streets. Should we object to making the cure of drunkenness pay? If all our methods of saving people from disease and degradation paid as well as those things which encourage disease and degradation, the kingdom of God would soon be on earth.

Again, we have ignorantly supposed that the Keeley cure might encourage drunkenness by robbing it of its terrors, or, perhaps, by enabling people to drink with greater impunity. But the person who has been cured of alcoholism by this method may contract the disease again by indulging in intoxicants. Dr. Keeley does not propose to treat a man but once. He does not propose to waste his time on fools, for it is a very foolish child who would put his hand in the fire after it has been burned.

The five per cent that Dr. Keeley fails to cure are for the most part those who may be called fools. They do not want to be cured. The doctor plainly says he cannot put brains and a moral nature into a patient. A club composed of patients who have graduated is a total abstinence club. It is organized to help its members stay cured, and already has one thousand members.

I am glad that the institute in Olympia is receiving the encouragement that it has. One of our city papers has made a move towards raising a fund to help people without means to secure the benefit of the treatment. One of the members of the committee to have charge of the fund is the minister of one of the popular churches. In addition to curing the disease, let the people of Olympia exert themselves to help the patients to keep cured. Let our people do something to prevent others from getting the disease. Reading rooms, club rooms (without the saloon attendants) and coffee houses are needed. Help the reading rooms already struggling for existence. Establish more. Promoting health, virtue and morality ought to be made to pay as well as the business of pandering to vicious passions and appetites.