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Have we anyone able to tell us more about the ideas of Hank P's prominent Chicago physician regarding pressure of the spinal fluid, their history and validity?

 

On page 140 paragraph 2 Hank P wrote "I well remember the shock I received when a prominent doctor in Chicago told me of cases where pressure of the spinal fluid actually ruptured the brain."

Do we have anyone with knowledge of medicine and/or medical history who can tell us more about this spinal fluid pressure theory??



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The only thing I have ever found that MIGHT be relative to this is the following from Dr. Siilkworth's April, 1937 article "Reclamation of the Alcoholic" in Medical Record:

"To relieve the pressure in the brain and spinal cord (unless spinal puncture is contemplated), dehydration must begun at once. Unless contraindicated, we begin with a large dose of physic, preferably a cathartic to be followed by a saline purgative."

Perhaps Silkworth had read the "prominent Chicago physician's" report of this phenomenon and passed that knowledge along to Hank?
 

A while back I found an article in the NYT archives about a physician in NY City who was relieving spinal fluid pressure to cure alcoholism in 1942 I think. I tried to see if he had moved from Chicago, but I didn't find any evidence to suggest that. Since he wasn't Hank's Chicago doctor and I couldn't connect him to AA in any way I dropped it.

My question is along the lines of the one I asked about Dr. Silkworth's colloidal gold and colloidal iodine treatment [ 2020-12-11 ? } which Bob Dunkley was able to answer.

I am curious as to whether this doctor's concern with spinal fluid pressure turned out to be valid, the history of treatments of spinal fluid pressure, whether such a treatment would have been considered a sensible treatment at the time and how it would be viewed today.?

Having read your book, when I found the NYC doctor who liked to relieve spinal pressure, my first thought was "Hank probably misremembered it or put the doctor in Chicago instead of NYC for some other reason!"

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The following three paragraphs have been taken from AAHL message 11066 that wrote back in 2015. I'm sorry to report that the Hindsfoot link contained within the three paragraphs that mentions the writing of Cora Finch no longer works. Hope these three paragraphs are found to be helpful.
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Gary Neidhardt
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? ? ? While the Towns-Lambert treatment was in every way bizarre, we must keep in mind that Towns was praised not only by Dr. Alexander Lambert, who went on to become President of the AMA, but other doctors such as very highly esteemed Robert C. Cabot of Massachusetts General Hospital. Towns¡¯ advertising brochures carried the endorsements of more than two dozen other doctors. Towns authored four articles in?Century Magazine on alcoholism and addiction in 1912, nearly three dozen articles in sophisticated magazines marketed to doctors such as?Modern Hospital and?Medical Review of Reviews from 1916 to 1918. His book?Habits That Handicap, published in 1915, is still available in print today with the forward by Dr. Cabot and the appendix by Dr. Lambert. ?Not bad for Towns, who was a self-educated man who may have never had more than an eighth grade education.

????? But as bizarre as Towns¡¯ methods were, I don¡¯t believe the belladonna treatment would fit into the top five of weird treatments for alcoholism, maybe not even the top ten, used around a hundred years ago. The Oppenheimer Treatment was advertised to be supported by 3,000 doctors, and all you had to do was send in $5 to receive the cure. The Keely Cure, where one received four injections a day of a mysterious formula, is right up there in bizarre-land. There are many more.? My particular bizarre favorite? How about the treatment given Roland Hazard in 1928? Included as a footnote in my book thanks to Cora Finch:? ? ?

????? A medical approach to curing alcoholism was given to Rowland Hazard in 1928, and is listed here as an example of a cure provided by a licensed medical doctor of the times. From?Stellar Fire: Carl Jung, a New England Family, and the Risks of Anecdote, Cora Finch,?http://hindsfoot.org/jungstel.pdf, @2008, p. 28,?¡°After returning to the United States, Rowland Hazard went into treatment with Dr. Edward S. Cowles in New York City. Dr. Cowles subscribed to an allergy theory of alcoholism. The allergy, he believed, irritated the membranes of the brain and spinal cord. His treatment included repeated lumbar punctures. Dr. Cowles believe that drawing off spinal fluid would decrease the pressure and protein content of the cerebrospinal fluid, and that this would eliminate the craving for alcohol. His methods were unorthodox and controversial, even by the standards of the time.¡±

[Moderator note: I have the data and I'm working on getting Hindsfoot back online... And I'm making progress on doing so. Keep your fingers crossed that we can get back up soon! -Thom]
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Thanks for digging that out of the archive Gary and sharing it again. Your response answers my original question to my satisfaction. Thanks!

Your response led me to look for Charles Towns' book. Here is a Project Gutenberg edition of it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35270/35270-h/35270-h.htm

Here is a link to an Issuu.com document, "Additional Notes to Stellar Fire" by Cora Finch.
It states that Rowland had been treated by Cowles.

Here's an excerpt from Dr. Edward Spencer Cowle's book "Don't Be Afraid" here.

The person who posted it was under the impression that Bill Wilson had written the passage in "To Employers". ?
This book was published in 1941. Though from the dust jacket (which you can see on a Amazon) it is apparently about much more, from the excerpt on Eskimo.com it seems like in part it is a response to Alcoholics Anonymous,

"To Remember

??? 1. Chronic alcoholism is not a sin. It is a brain chemistry disease.
??? 2. Moral suasion, psychoanalysis, and religious conversions cannot alter the facts of the brain chemistry any more than they can cure tuberculosis.
??? 3. Lumbar punctures that reduce the fluid pressure on the brain are the only means that will change the brain chemistry and give the patient the chance of a scientific cure. "

I wasn't so interested in the identity of Hank's prominent Chicago physician but having looked into it a little it seems that some people assert that it is Cowles (who was not in Chicago but definitely punctured lumbars to treat alcoholism) while others identify Dr. Dan Craske MD (who was in Chicago) as both Hank's physician and Earl Treat's "doctor, a young man" (though how prominent this young man was in 1939 is an unknown to me).

In "Names & Events in the A.A. Big Book From the members of the AA History Lovers" edited by Glenn Chesnut (April 26,2014) Dr. Cowles and Dan Craske M.D. are listed with question marks as possibilities for the Chicago physician. On this website Dan Craske MD is identified as both the prominent Chicago physician and "The doctor, a young man" who turned over to two prospects to Earl Treat in Chicago.? .? No sources are given on that site or on another which states that Craske is Hank's prominent Chicago physician.

Presumably Earl Treat would have remembered the name of the young Chicago physician who referred the first newcomers who led to the founding of AA in Chicago. If Dr. Dan Craske was the doctor to whom Hank was referring presumably he would have heard of him through Earl,

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