He worked with Bill W in the founding of AA. He wrote the Doctors Opinion. This is a very important part of the Big Book. Like Lois Wilson he was an important non-alcoholic in the formation. He died from a heart attack.
William Duncan Silkworth was born in Brooklyn on July 22, 1873, to parents William Silkworth and Isabelle Silkworth, née Duncan. William was the eldest of three siblings; he had a younger brother named Russel and a younger sister named Mabel. He was an American medical doctor and specialist in the treatment of alcoholism . He was director of the Charles B Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions in New York City in the 1930s, during which time William Griffith Wilson, a future co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), was admitted on three occasions for alcoholism. Dr. Silkworth had a profound influence on Wilson and encouraged him to realize that alcoholism was more than just an issue of moral weakness. He introduced Wilson to the idea that alcoholism had a pathological, disease-like basis.
During Dr. Silkworth's career, he is estimated to have treated more than 40,000 alcoholics and was regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the field. In 1937, Dr. Silkworth published a pair of articles in the Medical Record titled "Alcoholism as a Manifestation of Allergy" and "Reclamation of the Alcoholic" wherein he proposed a physical disease model of alcoholism and a psychotherapeutic treatment method that induced patients to admit powerlessness over their addiction and to adopt a new moral psychology. In the latter paper, Dr. Silkworth describes five case studies of patients that he had treated for alcoholism at the Towns Hospital; in Case V, Dr. Silkworth describes the successful recovery of Bill Wilson who was already in the early stages of founding the organization that would come to be known as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Dr Silkworth died on March 22, 1951 at Towns Hospital in New York City.
Bio: Gene Baumwoll CSW
Find a Grave member # 46879782
He worked with Bill W in the founding of AA. He wrote the Doctors Opinion. This is a very important part of the Big Book. Like Lois Wilson he was an important non-alcoholic in the formation. He died from a heart attack.
William Duncan Silkworth was born in Brooklyn on July 22, 1873, to parents William Silkworth and Isabelle Silkworth, née Duncan. William was the eldest of three siblings; he had a younger brother named Russel and a younger sister named Mabel. He was an American medical doctor and specialist in the treatment of alcoholism . He was director of the Charles B Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions in New York City in the 1930s, during which time William Griffith Wilson, a future co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), was admitted on three occasions for alcoholism. Dr. Silkworth had a profound influence on Wilson and encouraged him to realize that alcoholism was more than just an issue of moral weakness. He introduced Wilson to the idea that alcoholism had a pathological, disease-like basis.
During Dr. Silkworth's career, he is estimated to have treated more than 40,000 alcoholics and was regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the field. In 1937, Dr. Silkworth published a pair of articles in the Medical Record titled "Alcoholism as a Manifestation of Allergy" and "Reclamation of the Alcoholic" wherein he proposed a physical disease model of alcoholism and a psychotherapeutic treatment method that induced patients to admit powerlessness over their addiction and to adopt a new moral psychology. In the latter paper, Dr. Silkworth describes five case studies of patients that he had treated for alcoholism at the Towns Hospital; in Case V, Dr. Silkworth describes the successful recovery of Bill Wilson who was already in the early stages of founding the organization that would come to be known as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Dr Silkworth died on March 22, 1951 at Towns Hospital in New York City.
Bio: Gene Baumwoll CSW
Find a Grave member # 46879782
Bio by: george olver
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