1938, imagine this ...

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To reconstruct (as best we can) how any book was conceived we 'put ourselves in the author's shoes'. There are -- let us say -- no surviving drafts, no workbooks nor outlines. So we look at what else they wrote, who they studied with in prior years, any correspondence or literary recollections from the period. Admittedly, such meagre scraps are hardly an account of the mental process and complexities of writing a 400pp book.

Given certain facts, what do we then imagine the Author(s) thought or intent, behind the published artifact itself?

We can say w/ certainty the Author is a German emigre PhD, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Jewish intellectual formerly from an elite Berlin circle now dispersed across a darkening Western world. They are devoted to Classical History, but not to the old theories of anglophone or American academia. On the contrary, his teachers of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule had boldly synthesized Egyptian, Jewish, Persian and Greek elements: a new framework must be created to reflect upon history, to recreate what was or what might have been.

Then -- quite unexpectedly -- a novel assignment was given by his boss at the behest of the Rockefeller Foundation. Quid pro quo, a massive grant was offered in exchange for writing a book in short order. It quickly became clear this was a special project for John D. Rockefeller Jr., the ultimate financial supporter of our Author (among several hundred other refugee scholars) for the previous 4 years after the Rockefeller funded visa arrangement.

A satisfactory effort for the RF would probably guarantee a choice professorship (it did), but everything must be done Anonymously (it was). But what should he write? Something on First Century Christianity, they want, but Not Too Jewish. In 1938, the issue of Mandate Palestine was intensely political, and this project could be no excuse to openly attack Herr Hitler. At that time, there were some believing the USA would not survive Nazism. A Rockefeller agent (also German) was a liason and assistant -- to make sure this didn't get out of hand, turn political, and to record firsthand accounts of the subjects.

How do you write all this -- as an escaped Jew, yes -- while your people faced a promised erasure (or at least, as an existential target) according to the evil doctrine of Nazism? Almost anything preserving silence seems absurdly trivial, offensive. So how could an intellectual 'detourne' this knotty predicament by writing a book on salvation?

Compose cryptically. Write about philosophical 'Jews' who disappeared, plausibly deniable as Jews (Sethians) -- or maybe not even Jews, merely Hermeticists who only sounded Jewish. On a different subject of similar period and place, Lion Feuchtwanger grappled with this very troubling duality. Present such a cover-story (historical variants) while sketching the future organization as a sleeping Golem, unknowing its own Creator and Semitic origin? This resurrectionist cult, borrowing Jacob's Ladder to practice (Jewish) anagogy, would express a mystical Judaism invisible, unidentifiable to believers. If scholars like E.R. Goodenough couldn't be more precise or convincing, who would even suspect or read the hints of a 1st C Jewish mystery cult? What's a Gnostic, anyway?

Let's suppose -- to put a very fine point on it -- that Philo's Aletheian Anthropoi were (mostly) Sethians, an alternative cult which 'disappeared': went underground or pretended towards Christianity. That a Pythagorean colony of Therapeutae (soul healers) wrote hermetically, for a much larger community of 'Gnosis-seekers' in the Diaspora c.15 AD, to suggest an occult (Mosaic) message: Escape Egypt, while you still can! That you will inevitably face a generation wandering, tested by circumstances and the peril of relapse, remain sober unto God: dry as the desert.

In late adulthood, Philo Judaeus joined a cult of Jeremiah. Were his sober Rechabites ancestors of the water-drinking Sethians/Therapeutae?

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K.Jaspers' work is not fully translated into English and some of his minor ideas yet remain obscure.  One minor Jasperian trope which needs further elaboration by Existentialist scholars is the Cone, a geometric form easily visualized by average readers but left unexplained by the German philosopher.  Is the Cone a metaphoric phenomenon, an intellectual force-principle, a concentrating idea? From the dearth of literary evidence I've examined, only tentative conclusions are suggested. Furthermore, the Cone concept seems connected to Jaspers' famous Cipher; therefore, it IS significant and must have been explained to his German students of the Late-1920s in greater detail. At Heidelberg, Ludwig Edelstein chose Professor Karl Jaspers as his Ph.D. advisor, so it would be no surprise to see examples of Jasperian influence in Edelstein's work a decade later. Then the obvious question arises: can we find the Jasperian 'Cone' -- as a symbol, metaphor or cipher -- in the Anonymous Authors' 1938 work?

In AA (1939) the Jasperian cipher is revealed at least twice: a) 'Wall Street' (representing Capitalism, Greed, the Roaring Twenties, Bill's obsession, etc.) is "the Maelstrom" (an alcoholic symbol, in Baltimore writer E.A. Poe's work), and b) the Alcoholic, in his manifest Typhonic chaos, is "a Tornado" (direct literary allusion to the semi-autobiographical protagonist in Tender is the Night "like the tornado who had hurried through the old red buildings of Hopkins": Phipps Clinic patient and famous Baltimore alcoholic, F. Scott Fitzgerald). The A.A. Fellowship, as a "widening circle...on earth" follows this Theme also. Therefore, given such blatant examples, we would seek to understand the meaning(s) of Jaspers' Cone and how Edelstein esoterically deploys this mysterious Symbol as a Sober antithesis to the Alcoholic 'Cone of Destruction.'

Within the Egyptian context (in light of the cliché that 'the Jews built the Pyramids'), the Architectural Theme confirms the Program as an occult endeavour to build a celestial platform for Pharoah's people (i.e. Rockefeller's redeemed ex-drunks) to reach the Heavens. Like a reconstructed Chaldaean Ziggurat, the Anonymous Authors' Program is a modern (German-Jewish/Existentialist) abstraction for Jacob's Ladder, Genesis 28:10-17.

If mindful, we can easily grasp how this is profoundly significant to the A. A. in other, related tropes. 'Mixing cement' in an Hermetic-alchemical formulation is really the combining of personalities (i.e. souls) in Fellowship. 'Building an Arch' is basic organizational activity -- trained workers realizing noetic forms out of simple limestone blocks (i.e. Plinthine's Jews, constructing Pharoah's fortresses) -- which symbolizes the metaphysical work of Chaldaean Asaphim, whose sky-bridge (i.e. the Milky Way) was alternately conceived as a Serpent, Arch or Ladder. Now we begin see how the Edelsteins' "Bridge of Reason" expanded and reinterpreted Jaspers' Cone cipher, spotlighting a very specific and peculiar historico-cultural context, to explain the derivative and descendant Aletheian Anthropoi (A. A. = Sons of God) of Philo Judaeus. Much like their ancestors who built Pharaoah's epic sky-temples, the A. A. who "visioned the Great Reality" express what Israel ('those who see God') does best: revealing the course or passage god-ward. **Likewise, Enoch (Hebrews 11:5) was "translated" (μετετέθη = transitioned, changed) or uplifted to Heaven; this was based on mystical Sethian dogma, it is instructional Judeo-Egyptian palingenesis or Judeo-Hermetic metempsychosis.**

It is no more complicated than this: in 1938, the Edelsteins re-created and elaborated expressions of First Century Alexandrian Jewish Mysticism, yet they did so partly from a psychiatric-philosophic (Jasperian Existentialist) framework learned at Heidelberg c.1928.

Philosophie: II. Existenzerhellung [1932],p.202:

Situationen hängen zusammen, wenn sie auseinander hervorgehen. Ich bin Situationszusammenhängen unterworfen, deren Kegeln erst wissenschaftliche Forschung bewußt macht; diese werden nie ganz bewußt, weil das Bewußtsein von ihnen die Situation und damit jene Kegeln selbst wieder ändert, indem es als ein neuer Faktor in die Situationsgestaltung eintritt.

Situations are related when they arise apart. I am subject to situational contexts, only scientific research makes me aware of this cone. I never become completely conscious these contexts, because the awareness of them changes the situation and thus, those cones themselves, again, by entering as a new factor shaping the situation.

Beyond one example or context, we can find Jaspers using this term in his other works as far back as 1922. In 1938, Jaspers was using 'Cone' as synonym for organizing perspective or principled focus. See K. Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie: Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt A.M. 1937 [1938], p.35:

Alternately, we tend to the prejudices that absolutize an encompassing: thus Dasein: as if the life-promoting thing were the last and could take itself absolutely; thus consciousness in general, the mind: as if in the properly conscious the being itself were to be taken into possession and not only a perspective, - a cone of light into the darkness {ein Lichtkegel in das Dunkel},- was taken within the comprehensive Real-Being; thus the spirit: as if the idea were real and sufficient for itself; thus existence: as if a selfhood could be enough for itself, while it comes from the other precisely to the extent that it is itself and sees itself pointed to the other. In the isolation of a single sense of truth, truth can no longer remain truth.

Felix Müller's period dictionary, Mathematisches Vokabularium, Deutsch-Französisch [1900], p.254 very clearly defines a Kegel-perspective as "a conical or centralizing perspective"; certainly, the Jasperian Kegel is a "cone".

Metrological phenomena of both the Whirlpool and Cyclone Funnel are typically symbolized as cones, familiar mental images from the basic text:

Maelstrom/Whirlpool:

Tornado/Cyclone:



A comparison of the Pyramid and Cone Forms:



K Jaspers, Einführung in die Philosophie [1936], p.?

Wenn das Sein als Ausgelegtsein begriffen ist , so scheint auf dieselbe Weise getrennt werden zu müssen : Auslegung legt etwas aus;
unserer Auslegung steht das Ausgelegte, das Sein selber gegenüber. Aber diese Trennung gelingt nicht. Denn es bleibt für uns nichts Bestehendes, geradezu Wißbares, das nur ausgelegt würde und nicht selber schon Auslegung wäre. Was immer wir wissen, es ist nur ein Lichtkegel unseres Auslegens in das Sein oder das Ergreifen einer Auslegungsmöglichkeit. Das Sein im Ganzen muß so beschaffen sein, daß es alle diese Auslegungen für uns ins Unabsehbare ermöglicht. Aber die Auslegung ist nicht willkürlich. Sie ist als richtige von einem objektiven Charakter. Das Sein erzwingt diese Auslegungen. Alle Seinsweisen für uns sind zwar weisen des Bedeutens, aber doch auch Weisen notwendigen Bedeutens. Die Kategorienlehre als die Lehre von den Strukturen des Seins entwirft daher die Seinsweisen als Bedeutungsweisen, zum Beispiel als Kategorien des Gegenständlichen «in Identität, Beziehung, Grund und Folge oder als usw. Alles Sein in seinem Bedeuten ist für uns wie eine nach allen Seiten sich erweiternde Spiegelung. ...

If being is understood as being interpreted, then it seems to have to be separated in the same way: Interpretation interprets something; our interpretation is confronted with the interpreted, being itself. But this separation does not succeed. For there remains for us nothing that exists, nothing that is knowable, that would only be interpreted and would not itself already be interpretation. Whatever we know, it is only a cone of light of our interpretation into being or the grasping of a possibility of interpretation. Being as a whole must be such that it makes possible for us all these interpretations into the incalculable. But the interpretation is not arbitrary. It is of an objective character as a correct one. Being forces these interpretations. All ways of being for us are indeed ways of meaning, but nevertheless also ways of necessary meaning. The category theory as the doctrine of the structures of being therefore designs modes of being as modes of signification, for example as categories of the objective "in identity, relation, or as reason and consequence, etc." All being in its signifying is for us like a reflection expanding in all directions. ...

Additional examples.
See K. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit [1922] p.:

Nach der Entzauberung der Welt, welche erst recht den Staat in den Lichtkegel von Frage und Wissenwollen brachte, erlaubt es die geistige Lage der Gegenwart jedem, in diesen Raum des menschlichen Gesamtdaseins einzutreten.

After the disenchantment of the world, which even more so the State is brought into the light-cone of questioning and of a desire for knowing, the intellectual situation of the present allows everyone to enter this space of total human existence.

Translated poorly in Man in the Modern Age [1949], p.90:

Now that the charm has been dispelled which first brought the State into the light-pencil of questioning and of the desire for knowledge, the contemporary mental situation enables every one to enter this region of human community life. To every one the dreadfulness of the world of human activity in the domain of State reality will appear in its full inexorability.

Now -- since the Jasperian 'Cone' is a cipher (a complex metaphor, w/ varied meanings) for that organizing principle of PERSPECTIVE or FOCUS -- we can understand that related terms like Outlook, Attention, Direction, etc. may indeed possess some Jasperian nuance. For example, p.33: "If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic..." p.102: "his attention should be drawn to you as a person who has recovered." Personally, I find this material 'merely' the dull psychiatric cover for the more fascinating directions to Judeo-Hermetic (Nazorean?) anagogy and henosis. (In any case, I wouldn't credit the Big Book's Judaic Hermeticism to Jaspers' theory, though I may be too dismissive on this point.)

Dr. Karl Jaspers was not only a Philosophy professor; he was a practicing psychiatrist who treated alcoholics and wrote a book on Psychopaths.

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An important summary of Dr. John Rathbone Oliver's work under Dr. Adolf Meyer, during 1917-1919, here.

The Anonymous Doctor was actually a "Number #1 psychiatrist," a best-selling author and a long-time beneficiary of Rockefeller money ... see his 1943 Obituary in Time Magazine here. Detailed text analysis here.

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Ludwig Edelstein was a philologist, but also a philosopher and historian. He was a Member of the History of Ideas Club, among famous Johns Hopkins colleagues like Biblical archeologist W.F. Albright. Edelstein's friendship with Albright is known from surviving correspondence, but a more important connection is established in a kind a dialogue w/ Albright's theory we indirectly see revealed in Edelstein's 1938 project. This answers the question "Who is God in the Big Book?"

From that period, 1934-8, W.F. Albright's published papers and books reveal an exceedingly close inspection of the Caanite-Egyptian God, Horon=Baal Zeboul.

"The Syro-Mesopotamian God Šulmán-Ešmún and Related Figures." Afo 7 [1931-32] pp.164-69.
“New Light on Early Canaanite Language and Literature.” BASOR 46 [1932], pp.15–20.
"The North-Canaanite Epic of 'Al'èyân-Ba'al and Môt", JPOS 12 [1932], pp.185-208.
"More Light on the Canaanite Epic of 'Al'êyân-Ba'al and Mot", BASOR 50 [1933] pp.13-20.
"The North-Canaanite Poems of 'Al'èyân-Ba'al and the Gracious Gods", JPOS 14 [1934], pp.101-140.
The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (The Richards lectures at the University of Virginia. [1931]) 3rd Ed. [1935].
"Zabûl Yam and Thâpit Nahar in the Combat between Ba'al and the Sea", JPOS 16 [1936], pp.17-21.
"The Canaanite God Hauron (Horon)", AJSL [1936], pp.1-12.
"New Canaanite Historical and Mythological Data", BASOR 63 [Oct.1936], pp.23-32.
"Recent Progress in North-Canaanite Research', BASOR 70 [1938], pp.18–24.
“Was the Patriarch Terah a Canaanite Moon-god?", BASOR 71 [1938], pp.35–40.
...
"The Egypto-Canaanite God Hauron", BASOR 84 [1941], pp.7-12 .
"Anath and the Dragon", BASOR 84 [1941], pp.14-17.

It would appear our Edelsteins cleverly masked a line of argumentation (that Jesus was a Nazorean descended from Egyptian Sethians, that Semitic Therapeutae represented an alternative, highly syncretistic Ophitic cult traced in the OT, etc.) in silent dialogue w/ Albright's period theories about "Elyon Baal". The unfamiliar occult god of the Big Book -- Creator of tornados and floods, the Drowning Man's God -- is indicated as the same Great Power behind Jesus: Horon.

Although the first edition appeared in 1942, W.F. Albright's Archaeology and the Religion of Israel was being written in 1938 and therefore its theory was highly topical to the Edelsteins' intellectual community (and Club, at Hopkins) at that time. Albright tells us that Hauron was the Semitic storm god of cyclones and waterspouts, maelstroms, {the Queer Twist} floods, etc., represented as Healer-god Eshmun and associated with Destroyer-god Resheph. In conjunction with Anat he would appear to be Semite Yahu's Son (Herem, the God who must die and be reborn?), and as Phoenician 'Melqart' he would be both Baal Haddad's Son and 'Herakles' (as Phoenicio-Libyan Herakles is resurrected by a Young God, Horus-Harpokrates-Eshmun). Prince of the City, Horon was Philistine Baal-Zeboul: a cosmopolitan god. For the Proto-Jews, Adoni-Zedek and Melqi-Zedek also confirm Jerusalem as Horon's city under a Philistine authority (this may explain Jerusalem's absence from the Pentateuch) -- loser god Horon was very consciously replaced in the OT c.300 BC. Much of this material was only 'discovered' (summarized) in the 1930s: it was still a hot topic among Classicists and historians of Semitic religion in 1938. So who did the Edelsteins pick for the god of their Big Book, written at Johns Hopkins?

See W.F. Albright's Archaeology and the Religion of Israel [1942/1953], p.80

Similarly, the mighty storm-god was also the dying and reviving deity, whether in the name of Al'iyân Baal (at Ugarit), of Hadad-Rimmon (at Megiddo), or of 'my lord,' Adoni (Greek Adonis), at Byblus and in Cyprus. In no religion of antiquity was there such a strong tendency to bring opposites together as in Canaanite and Phoenician belief and practice.

We cannot illustrate the problems that face us any better than to sketch the material now at our disposal for the reconstruction of the beliefs about the god Hauron (originally Haurân, whence Hôrân and Haurôn).28 This god appears as an Asiatic divinity in three different Egyptian sources: on a number of faience plaques from the Fifteenth Century; on a statue of the young pharaoh as the god Hauron from the early Thirteenth Century; in several passages in the Magical Papyrus Harris. The monumental representations identify the god consistently with Horns, while the magical papyrus calls him "the valiant shepherd,” who protects his worshippers from wild beasts. Here he is associated with Anath. At Ugarit Hauron appears, c.1400 B.C., in association with Astarte. In a Phoenician incantation from Arslan Tash, dating to the Seventh Century B.C., Hauron is mentioned with Baal and said to have a number of wives; his chief consort is given the appellation "whose utterance is true.” Finally, on a Greek inscription from Delos in the Aegean, about the Third Century B.C., Hauron (Hauronas) is invoked, along with Herakles, by men of Jamnia in the land of the Philistines. Moreover, the name of the god appears in Canaanite personal and place-names (Beth-horon, etc.) from c.1900 to c.600 B.C. Yet the existence of this deity in the Canaanite pantheon was unknown until some ten years ago! The interpretation of the name is obscure, but the most likely rendering is ”the one belonging to the depths,” i.e., god of the underworld. In this case his figure was closely related to that of Resheph. His close association with Herakles at Jamnia suggests that he was the god who was adopted by the Tyrians as their chief deity, under the name of Melqart (Phoenician Milk-qart, "King of the City,” i. e., of the underworld, which was called "the city,” in Ugaritic, just as in Akkadian).29 Since Melqart was called "Herakles” by Greeks and Romans, this suggestion is entirely reasonable. The god of the underworld was at the same time a chthonic deity, that is, he was lord of the ground and of its productive faculties. So we can scarcely be surprised to find that the annual festival of the resurrection of Melqart was celebrated in the early spring at Tyre.

The Chronos god in 3-Persons described by Philo Judaeus c.35 AD should be the God Concept of a significant group (older cult) of Jews also contemporary to the Alexandrian Jewish theosopher. The relevance of Philo's explication would testify to the group's existence and philosophy, which Philo tried to harmonize judaistically if somewhat obscurely. Albright had not made this explicit connection, but the 'forms of Horon' which Albright identified adequately matches the lineage which Philo sketched.

If we insist Chronos/Horon must be a Time-God, (though he was not in Philo of Byblos), Time-Lord Melchizedek may be the connection.

1. Father God: Hadad ................... Horon 1 ....... Chronos 1
2. Consort: Astarte /// Anat
3. First Son: Melqart/Herakles ..... Horon 2 ....... Chronos 2
4. Second Son: Eshmun ............... Horon 3 ........ Chronos 3

P. Clayton Rivers (Ed.), Alcohol and Addictive Behavior [1987], p.14:

{Circa 1936,} inpatient programs, when offered, were more often housed in state mental hospitals and prisons than in facilities devoted exclusively to alcoholism treatment. At the same time, influential advocates of dedicated treatment programs did exist. For example, famed Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Adolf Meyer said: "The most dependable means available (for alcoholism treatment) are asylums for drunkards with more or less efficient provisions for aftercare, insisting on total abstinence during the period of physical and character reconstruction." (Meyer, 1932). Meyer's thinking accords well with current theories of treatment in most regards, except his view that the alcoholic's character must be reconstructed during treatment to bring his moral sense and character back up to normal levels.

The relevant material from Dr. Meyer, "Alcohol as a Psychiatric Problem" (pp.273-309 was first published in Dr. Haven Emerson's Alcohol and Man [1932]. This paper was republished in The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer: Vol. 4, Mental Hygiene, with an introd. by Alexander H. Leighton [1952], p.193:

Let us now turn to the constructive program. Some of the specific items just mentioned are general problems which all social workers have to wrestle with. Any effort to fight alcoholism will help us as much as it will help the criminologist and the charity worker, because it is not merely an individual problem but really one of communities. What I feel most keenly is the necessity of organizing in our communities societies for total abstinence, to which it would be possible to join individuals who are recovering from the warning effects of disease. Unless recovering individuals join groups of normally-living persons maintaining standards of total abstinence and providing social compensations for drinking habits, it is not often that they will resist for any length of time the attractions of alcohol and of destructive social companionships.

p.219:

Looking over the alcoholics, we may depend on giving them strong enough interests, but you often have to use additional helps, through societies, by getting them into contact with organized abstinence circles. To do that adequately, it seems to me that the aftercare should have a directory of all the societies for anti-alcoholic propaganda in the district. Many a patient has got to be reached by people of his own level, as has been shown by the Salvation Army. The aftercare committee ought not to try and simply be it, but should take advantage of all the numerous people who would be perfectly willing to help if they knew how and where.

Mrs. Stewart suggests that “if your subject happens to be a Roman Catholic, you can do something.”

This is a rather hard indictment of Protestant societies, and I think it would be well to let them know it and stir them up. In this country I must confess the matter of anti-alcoholic propaganda has been allowed to become sadly lax. It will, of course, always depend on one or two individuals in a community who have enough determination and personal
{p.220} inspiration. Professor Forel attained his purpose of finding a leader by putting a shoemaker in charge of a hospital for drunkards. That shoemaker had the conviction that something could be done.* Forel himself told me he did not think many physicians could do it because they are apt not to have the necessary single-minded determination. If you want to have success, you must have conviction.

In reply to Mrs. Stewart’s question about abstinence societies in Switzerland, I would say very briefly that there are several, some of them connected with religious features and others absolutely independent. There are many miscreants who could not be brought within the folds of the church. There are also many intellectual people who, for some reason or other, could not ally themselves to or might not be acceptable in a definite congregation.

It is indeed well to recognize the many different sets and types of social units and the types of persons that would appeal to them. This morning we saw a Methodist farmer who was converted from alcoholism and then gave others the benefit of his conviction, but unfortunately beyond his own balance. Such a man might do some good if properly guided and used. Certain converts are apt to be the most useful people; they work among people of their level very much better than educated people could do, who speak a different language. Use individuals who have the conviction and help them; the strength and safeguards lie in organization.

A great function of societies lies in their bringing some fun and entertainment. This is one of the things prevention has got to be most concerned about. There are in the country and in cities difficulties in the possibility of having legitimate fun. The problem of creating possibilities of decent fun should be just as noble a task of well-meaning people as to provide occasions for religious and moral exhortation. How can village communities get their fun?

There is a lack of the more wholesome means of recreation, and some work should be done by the local and general societies who will take an interest. In my paper read in Albany, I especially emphasized the desirability of getting into communication with Young Men’s Christian Associations and other organizations. It is impossible for a committee to patrol the whole ground. You have to organize your forces judiciously, by carefully interesting those who you know have done something in practical directions. The experience in the Willard Hospital district shows especially that we must improve the social spirit in country districts by providing more social enjoyment. In this the ordinary demands of hygiene join our prophylaxis. A move in this direction helps the sick and, at the same time, a lot of other people. In this each stratum of society must find its own remedies; hence, the necessity of making the aftercare movement a very broad one, which can even make use of the help of a postman, as in one of Mrs. Stewart’s cases. The postman, if he is the right man, can keep you informed as to how things go and carry some practical encouragement A timely word or a reminder of certain helpful opportunities for...

Professor Auguste-Henri Forel, Director of Burghölzi ; noted.

p.452:

Similarly, the manner of working of the therapeutic measures must be very varied. We may have to surrender the kind of naivete that lies in the magic of the Keeley cure with its gold preparations (devised by Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, 1842-1900) and similar perpetuations of medicinal magic, acting strongly as suggestive measures. The experienced worker of today, in his desire for practical results, would not care to surrender such lifts and short cuts as may work in the individual case; but, instead of applying one formula that happens to have caught the faith and confidence of the public, there is an increasingly greater use made of the personal capacities and resources of the individual, and the relations of the patient to his social settings.

This method started with the natural and direct habits of using resources of persuasion and reasoning and appeal. Where that failed or was too time-consuming, hypnosis, the frank and direct use of suggestion in a state of special suggestibility, was and is with many an effective procedure. Today there is more willingness to give a study of the personality and situation the necessary time and care.

There is obviously a kind of natural selection in the way patients and cures and therapists find each other. Some work with faith-cures or religious-like conversions or with suggestion; and others use strychnine and belladonna as such, or in those more dramatic and, in a way, ceremonial cures like the Lambert-Towns treatment; others work more and more directly and frankly with the personal-biological and social-emotional factors in the “experiment of nature” with a personality adjustment, using every resource to this end.

The modern treatment of alcoholism aims to reduce the facts of the case to an open pattern of plastic and constructive experiment, necessarily individual, but concrete and specific in its working on and with the patient’s own material and cooperation. The emphasis is put on the facts of the person and his situation rather than on but one dominant resource or trick of the therapist, and certainly on more than mere exhortation. It is a question of mobilizing and activating the assets and eliminating the direct and indirect promoters of indulgence. In some cases, a ready-made plan of cure may work and may be the simplest scheme, as the magic of the quack, saving the person’s feelings at the expense of the pocketbook; or results are attained in a utilization of the patient’s religious responsiveness ; or one derives much help from participation in the less “supernatural” group influences, such as the temperance and abstinence societies and colonies. But, in a growing number of cases, a desire to do justice to the accessible personal and constitutional and social factors and participants creates a more and more individually and socially constructive tendency, and a willingness to distribute the attention over the past reactions and the personality susceptibilities with less and less of any idolatry for the special hobbies of the therapist. As a rule, the conviction that abstinence has to be complete is the great issue and an essential protection against

The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer: Vol. 4, Mental Hygiene, with an introd. by Alexander H. Leighton [1952], p.455:

To begin with the latter possibility, the methods and resources of health authorities, we run into the question of the dependability of the means of diagnosis, and the procedures. To what extent can authorities become guides rather than prosecutors? What are the rules of possession, use, and sale? When can a condition or a person be drawn under the regulations concerning the use of alcohol and its consequences? What is the status and value of demonstration of actually imbibed alcohol? To what extent can we speak of certain and definable means of treatment? Every one of these issues presents great difficulties of definition. Again, beginning with the last point, we feel forced to ask, what can we promise? To what extent do we need and depend on the good will and efficiency of the individuals involved in the treatment, and particularly on the drinker and his environment? How much can be expected of exhortation and promises, and coercion and regulation? of detention? of hospital or private treatment? of the promises to submit to or to accept any general or specific treatment? In short — what can really be promised and expected of even the best definable forms of treatment, and to what extent will they be acceptable to the individual, to the community, to those who have to pay, and those who have to stand the consequences of voluntary or compulsory care? Who attends to the collection of the facts which might help us put the handling of these complex questions on the ground of dependable experience? Who is going to be the judge, and responsible for the carrying out of the judgment or decision and its consequences?

Promises and good resolutions and even the best of intentions are in bad repute when we deal with drinkers, and especially with drunkards. The effect of drinking is to injure the capacity of self-determination directly and perceptibly. On the other hand, the nature of many drinkers and even drunkards is so engaging and appealing that one cannot count on a rigorous living up to, and support of, even the best judgment, by the members of the immediate social environment of the patient.

And what of the resources where one is granted the privilege of doing {p.456} the best one can? The most dependable means available are asylums for drunkards with more or less efficient provisions for aftercare, insisting on total abstinence during the period of physical and character reconstruction. The jail and prison have to work with the poorest human material and, at the same time, with the poorest equipment.The greatest advantage lies with treatment that can be voluntary and, at the same time, has a strict and final goal as far as abstinence goes. The intermediate measures are dependent on many uncontrollable factors of individual and individual and group assets or prejudices. We lack in our country the very beginnings of the necessary information as to the most effective procedures from the individual and the social points of view. Any effective modification of the alcohol situation has to include a public conscience, as well as a group and individual conscience, on the part of the rank and file of the participants, the producer, the trader, and the consumer, and even of the industrialist ...

Dr. Alan Gregg of the Rockefeller Foundation wrote a letter and introduced one "Dr. Howard E. Collier" to Dr. Henry Sigerist on 18 January 1938:
pp.18-9

Sigerist to Gregg, Baltimore ?, 1 February 1938

Dear Dr. Gregg:

It was a pleasure to see Dr. Howard E. Collier the other day. He came to my office and we had a long talk. I enjoyed meeting him and I think that he has some very sound ideas.

Yours sincerely,
Henry E. Sigerist

Collier see G. to S. of 18 January 1938

Dr. Howard Ebenezer Collier was a strange English Quaker spiritualist character to enter Sigerist's orbit via the Rockefellers in January 1938. He was a eugenicist, involved with industrial labor questions, but his orientation is quite peculiar.

"The Future Of Industrial Hygiene And Medicine" in The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3917 (Feb. 1, 1936), pp.214-216.
Towards a New Manner of Living, [1936] by Howard E. Collier
“The Mental Manifestations of Some Industrial Illnesses,” Occupational Psychology 13, no. 2 (1939): 96.
The Quaker meeting: A personal experience and method described and analysed, [1944].
Experiment with a life, [1953].
The Glory of Growing Old [1950].
Spiritual Healing in Quaker Meetings, [1957].

On a side-note here, the Refugee Scholars List is a very interesting record. See

"55. Ludwig Edelstein ....... Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD"