Influence
Ernest Jacoby, a businessman and Emmanuel parishioner, began weekly meetings for men with alcohol problems in 1909. Later the group was advertised as "A Club for Men to Help Themselves by Helping Others." In a 1910 church newsletter Elwood Worcester wrote that it was not "an ordinary temperance society," that the goal was "to see that careful scientific treatment by qualified physicians and clergymen is administered to those who need it." Primarily, however, the group was devoted to mutual help. The Jacoby Club remained active through the 1920s and 30s, and in its declining years provided space for the earliest Boston meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Courtenay Baylor became well known as an expert on alcoholism, publishing a description of his methods in 1919. One of the recovering alcoholics who attended his classes in 1921-22 was Richard R. Peabody, a descendant of a wealthy and influential Boston family. Peabody trained as a lay therapist under Baylor's direction and then set up his own practice, first in Boston and then in New York City. His 1931 book, The Common Sense of Drinking, was dedicated to Baylor and became a classic in the field of alcoholism treatment.
Read more about this topic: Emmanuel Movement
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The example of America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because it is the healing and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)