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Show Alcoholics Classed As Physical 3y Sick After Nev Studies One of tile great socio-medieal advances of the last decade and a half has been the general acceptance accept-ance of the fact that alcoholism is a disease. While many physicians still regard it as a psychiatric disorder, recent studies indicate that physiological factors are also involved. Indeed, some leading authorities contend that physiological physiolog-ical factors come first, and that chronic alcoholism is as much a physical disease as, for example, diabetes. The new viewpoint is important because physical diseases are susceptible sus-ceptible to control by drugs or other medical means. In fact, the concept that alcoholism is a physical physi-cal disease has just led to the first true cures of alcoholism on record. rec-ord. Several chronic drinkers of a dozen to twenty years' standing have been cured by massive doses of vitamins administered according accord-ing to a regimen worked out by Dr. Roger J. Williams, director of th e University of Texas Biochemical Biochem-ical Institute. The best that it has been possible to expect from other methods of treatment such as psychotherapy, "aversion cures" or Alcoholics Anonymous has been rehabilitation through total abstinence. absti-nence. None of these relieves the chronic alcoholic's irresistible craving for another drink, once he's had the first. Several of the patients treated by the Williams regimen, on the other hand, can take or leave their drinks like ordinary ordi-nary persons. A small number of cures don't prove a successful method of therapy, of course, but in the case of alcoholism they are worthy of note. A number of other alcoholic patients, moreover, though not cured, benefited greatly great-ly from the Williams treatment. There are two main approaches to alcoholism as a physical disease. dis-ease. One is that of Dr. Williams who holds that the craving for alcohol is due to an individual metabolic peculiarity, which can be relieved in a good proportion of cases by vitamin therapy. The other approach stems from studies stud-ies of hormonal deficiency, especially espe-cially of adrenocortical hormones, in many alcoholics. |