BEFORE HE MET DR. BOB, BILL W. had spent six months trying to sober up other alcoholics–without success. A conversation he had with Dr. Silkworth before leaving for Akron changed the way Bill carried the message to Doctor Bob and changed the destiny of millions of alcoholics to come.
The part of the message that hit Dr. Bob the hardest wasn’t the spiritual part; he knew about that. It was Dr. Silkworth’s diagnosis of alcoholism as a physical allergy and mental obsession leading inevitably to madness or death. The hopelessness of his condition was medical news to Dr. Bob, even though he was a physician himself.
Thereafter, Dr. Bob and Bill carried the same medical “bad” news to AA number three, and then followed up with the good news of “our spiritual approach.”
Thanks to Doctors Jellinek and Tiebout and the early AAs, the disease concept continued to unfold. And Sister Ignatia helped put the program into action at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, in a ward for alcoholics set up by Dr. Bob.