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:
“For character too is a process and an unfolding ... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and, after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more brighter star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with all your day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)