By Gene Watson
For The Independent

It had been an elegant hotel. In the last years of its life it was rundown and dilapidated. The exterior had not seen paint in years, windows were broken; dozens of shingles had blown off the roof, and the foundation was crumbling.

Residents of Grand Island knew the building as the Gold Cure Apartments. Many did not know where the odd name came from. Police cars were frequently seen parked in front. Police officers responded almost daily to a variety of calls. The building had become skid row-type housing for the poor and unfortunate.

At an earlier time the building had an illustrious place in Grand Island. What took place in the building's early history was done with either noble intentions or criminal intent to defraud.

The building itself has had several former lives. Built in 1875, it was originally the Union Pacific eating house and hotel to serve their passengers because the railroad had no railroad dining cars.

The building then became a hotel known as the Estes House.

In March 1893, renovations took place and it became the Baker-Rose Gold Cure Company's Institute. The company was offering a cure for alcoholism. The institute had opened in July 1892 at a different location under the name Bi-chloride of Gold Establishment.

From the very beginning the institute received praise from the newspaper editorial page and prominent Grand Island citizens.

It was the era of patent medicines when people sought solutions to many conditions through some form of elixirs, potions, powders, compounds or combinations of different substances to ease the effects of different illnesses.

In the 1880s and 1890s there was a saloon on every corner. Drinking intoxicating liquors was condoned by common consent. Many people habitually consumed to excess, which caused problems for the nation as a whole and for communities in particular.

Leslie Enraught Keeley, a former Civil War surgeon and railroad doctor, announced in 1879 that he had discovered the cause of alcoholism and had developed a guaranteed cure in the form of bi-chloride of gold.

Dr. Keeley told newspapers of the era that alcoholism was a disease caused by the poisoning of nerve cells by the alcohol consumed. His cure consisted of a strict diet and daily injections of "bichloride of gold" and other secret ingredients, which is where the term Gold Cure was coined.

Shortly after the announcement, Keeley opened the first Keeley Institute or Gold Cure Institute in Dwight, Illinois.

At the time alcoholism was a major problem in American society. Ministers frequently preached from the pulpit against the evils of "demon rum." People, especially women, were desperate for a cure.

Although the drinking of alcohol was primarily a male activity, wives and children suffered immeasurably from the after-effects. Deaths from alcohol itself and accidents were becoming commonplace.

County mental health boards were committing men and women to mental hospitals or lunatic asylums for dipsomania, defined as deliriums caused by madness brought about by the insatiable craving for alcoholic liquors. No meaningful treatment was available in such institutions.

Some men and a few women who consumed alcoholic beverages to excess on a regular basis were condemned with the label "drunks." They were routinely arrested and put in the "drunk tank" at the city or county jail until they sobered up. It was not unusual for some of these people to die in jail.

The police department in Grand Island was routinely ordered to clear the streets of drunks. For decades public intoxication was the most common reason for an arrest. The common perception was these men were too weak of character to overcome the hold that alcohol had on them.

The men themselves were seeking help, seeking a cure. Temperance leagues lobbied for prohibition. Nationwide there was an atmosphere of near panic in fear that the survival of our American society depended on finding a cure. People were willing to grasp at and believe in almost anything that held out a promise or a hope of success.

Declaring alcoholism a disease rather than a vice or lack of proper character was revolutionary.

Keeley's cure consisted of injections of bi-chloride of gold and other substances. People were able to purchase a take-home cure by purchasing bottles of his "Keeley Treatment for Inebriety" at $9 per bottle. Keeley announced in the newspapers that five bottles were needed for a complete cure.

The Keeley treatment did not receive much attention until 1891, when The Chicago Tribune published a series of articles praising his work. The popularity of "the cure" soared.

Men and women, mostly men, began flocking to the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Ill. Responding to the success of his endeavor, Dr. Keeley began sending graduates from his program to lecture around the country. He organized wives of former patients into a women's auxiliary group known as the Ladies Bichloride of Gold Club.

Keeley received testimonials from former patients and endorsements from prominent Americans. The Keeley cure was endorsed by the United States government, which recommended soldiers and sailors in veterans' homes be treated for the alcohol habit using the Keeley cure.

The institute in Dwight could not handle the numbers seeking admittance to the program. To meet the demand Keeley sold franchises, for a hefty sum, giving the exclusive right to administer the Keeley Cure in a specified geographic area to the purchaser of the franchise.

By 1893 there was a Keeley Institute in every state. Many states had more than one, locating them in their larger cities -- there were almost 200 Keeley Institutes nationwide.

There were many Gold Cure Institutes throughout Nebraska. Additionally, many foreign countries opened Keeley Institutes.

Dr. Keeley expanded his ewndeavor into treating the opium and tobacco habit and neurasthenia (a disease of the nervous system). Besides bi-chloride of gold, the elements in his remedies remained a secret.

To promote his cure and to help his franchisees succeed, Keeley published a newspaper called The Banner of Gold, which was filed with endorsements and testimonials.

Keeley with his secret treatment potions and franchised sanatoriums took in over 2.7 million dollars in a five-year period between 1892 and 1896, over $40 million in today's dollars.

The Baker-Rose Gold Cure Company's Institute in Grand Island, located in the building at North Front and Kimball, was doing a brisk business from the very beginning. Dr. John Jackson, the medical director of the Baker-Rose Cold Cure, told the newspaper that men and women were arriving every day seeking to take the cure.

In 1894 the superintendent of the Gold Cure Institute in Grand Island, Lafayette Bryan told the newspaper that they had over 350 graduates of the institute in the first year and half of operation. The newspaper praised the institute as being of "incalculable benefit in recovering many good citizens here and in neighboring towns."

The Grand Island building had 30 rooms. There were two patients per room; women patients were afforded privacy. Sixty patients paying $25 a week plus $5 a week for meals generated $1,800 income weekly.

There was a Nebraska Gold Cure Club, which met frequently in Grand Island at City Hall. Members of the club, all graduates of the cure, would stand and give testimonials. A band played temperance songs, and at the end of the meetings the Women's Christian Temperance Union would cater a tremendous banquet.

Club members proposed building a state-run Gold Cure Institute, paid for in the same manner state asylums were currently funded, or by having saloon owners pay a license fee to the state to fund the institute. They did not succeed in their proposal.

Despite the reported success and claims of a large number of patients being cured, skeptics doubted a remedy for alcoholism had been discovered. Keeley and his cure were subjected to controversy -- a controversy that continues to this day.

Medical practitioners and others expressed the skepticism by asking: "Did Dr. Keeley sincerely believe the injections being given to the patients four times a day would result in a cure for alcoholism, or was he taking advantage of people's desperation and gullibility?"

The question in different words was: "Was Dr. Keeley an orthodox medical practitioner or had he succumbed to quackery in pursuit of riches?"

At the height of its popularly, the Keeley Institute claimed over 500,000 former patients, an astonishing high success rate, and approval nationwide.

Soon thereafter, however, it became noticeable that there were a very high number of former patients relapsing. Alcohol still had a significant hold on their lives. The medical community was becoming more and more skeptical.

It was learned that the secret potion contained gold, alcohol and strychnine. The ingredients of the secret remedy were, from a medical standpoint, worthless. The medical community was convinced that Dr. Keeley had conducted no meaningful research or experimentation.

Skeptical editorials began appearing in large newspapers across the nation.

By 1896, under pressure and criticism from the established medical profession, the Keeley Institutes began closing around the county. By 1900 most were closed.

Dr. Keeley died in February 1900. Neither Keeley nor any of his business partners or franchisees were ever charged with any criminal act of fraud.

Epilogue

The institute in Grand Island closed its doors in 1918, and the building spent the second half of its life as a rooming house under different names and owners, ending as the Gold Cure Apartments.

In 1975 the building caught fire. The nearly 100-year-old wood frame building, still displaying some of the grace and characteristics of its pioneer days, quickly burned to the ground.

Grand Island Fire Chief Jim Rowell, who arrived on the scene as a young firefighter, remembers: "Seeing a building that large fully involved in flames is something I will never forget."

Grand Island had lost a piece of its history. The Grand Island Gold Cure Institute has since been mostly forgotten.

Historical footnote:

Despite the charlatanistic appearance of the Keeley cure, after 100 years the question still remains: Was the "Gold Cure" a genuine cure or a genuine fraud? Strong opinions can still be found on both sides of the debate.