The Gold Cure Club: Olympia's Reformed Drinkers Form a Society of Their Own
Veterans of the Keeley Institute organize a mutual-aid club — president, sergeant-at-arms and all — to pull other men with "the drink disease" back from the brink.
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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.
If those most interested — mothers — in the future of the men in Olympia now undergoing treatment at the Keeley Institute for the cure of the craving for whiskey, could have been present at the organization of the Bi-Chloride of Gold Club last evening, their faith for the future steadfastness and stability of the men would have been enhanced a hundred fold.
Faces, action and speech showed earnest enthusiasm, evincing the realization of the reaching and safe passage of a great crisis in the fever of life, with the resulting resumption of a normal temperature and regular pulse.
A constitution and by-laws were adopted. Mr. Charles R. Carroll, the pioneer student, was elected president, and Dr. Hal M. Wyman vice-president; Robert E. Stevens, secretary; H. Bowman, treasurer; John V. Yantis, sergeant-at-arms. Dr. J. W. Watt, Themopoleon Hoagland and Charles R. Carroll complete the board.
The club's chief aim is the reclaiming, through their aid, of indigent and worthy men with the drink disease.
“The club's chief aim is the reclaiming, through their aid, of indigent and worthy men with the drink disease.”
Decades before Alcoholics Anonymous, Olympia's Keeley Institute patients organized themselves into a dues-paying, officer-electing mutual-aid society — named for the bichloride-of-gold "cure" they had just taken. The earnestness is genuine even where the medicine was not: recovery in America has always been part charity, part commerce and part hope. The Keeley cure was eventually exposed as worthless, but the instinct to build a room full of people who understand the problem is not.
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