The Keely Institute in Dwilight - Speech or Presentation Example

Owing to its location in Dwight, Illinois, the Keeley Institute has played a big role in making Dwight more of a village. In the late 1890s, people relied heavily on the Keeley Cure for curing alcoholism. The institute also supplied the oral liquid to the consumers in their homes. Big names in the media like The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune played a fundamental role in the popularity of the Keeley Institute in general and the Keeley Cure in particular. The New York Times offered coverage to the drunken rabble-rousing of a Keeley Institute graduate in the year 1893.

Statements like this spread in the masses by such famous magazines as The New York Times worked wonders for the Keeley Institute. “…it is not everyday that a man from the Keeley Institute for the cure of drunkenness comes to New-York and gets into such a predicament” (“The Gold Cure”). Treatment provided to the people by the Keeley Institute has been generally thought of as gentle and pioneering. Throughout its history, the Keeley Institute sustained a homelike care philosophy. The subsequent branches spreading across the world resembled the original institute in Dwight in their models, designs and patterns.

The Keeley Institute at Dwight was criticized for its bizarre practices. . Later, all of them were shifted into John R. Oughton House. Four injections of gold bichlorides were given to each patient on daily basis in addition to several secret potions and tonics. The treatment was ranged over a period of 28 days. Doctors and researchers in the medical field made immense effort to find out the secret recipes of the tonics, their mysterious ingredients, their proportions in the recipe and their individualistic and combined effect upon the health.

After comprehensive research and years of pain, the medical professionals found that the ingredients of the treatment injections and tonics included but were not limited to alcohol, ammonia, apomorphine, strychnine, atropine, ginger, scopolamine, opium, coca and willow bark (Tracy 115). Different injections were dissolved into different quantities of white, blue and red liquids. Each patient was also individually prescribed a tonic in accordance with his/her medical condition. These tonics were to be given to the respective patients up to 12 times a day.

Patients were known as early therapeutic community as they freely roamed about the institute’s grounds and Dwight’s streets. The Keeley Institute provided the people with scientific cure for alcoholism. Keeley started to reap criticism as soon as he took his first decision of keeping his formula secret. Medical professionals were skeptical about the health effects of the ingredients of the tonics provided by the Keeley Institute and heavily objected the founder’s resolution to keep the formula as a secret.

One of the medical hospitals discussed the cure provided by the Keeley Institute in these words, “Walnut Lodge Hospital has no specific Gold cures, or new mysterious drugs, to produce permanent restoration in a few weeks. Inebriety is a