Ron Roizen, "Women Alcoholics at Bellevue,
1918-1919,"
Science 274:1450-1451, 1996.
Letter:
Women Alcoholics at Bellevue,
1918-1919
Data published in Science's pages in a 1936
article about historical trends in alcoholism
admissions at Bellevue Hospital in New York
City are probably mistaken. The question-
able data occur in a paper authored by alco-
holism, vitamin, and cholesterol researcher
Norman Jolliffe (1901-1961) ["The alcohol-
ic admissions to Bellevue Hospital" 83, 306
(1936)].
Jolliffe's paper reported a generally
downward trend in the proportion of female
(to male) Bellevue alcoholism admissions
from 1902 to 1933--the latter, national
prohibition's final year. The trend was
punctuated however by a sudden spike in
1918 and 1919, when the proportion of
female admissions virtually doubled to
41.8% and 39.5%, respectively. Jolliffe of-
fered two guesses for the occurrence. First, it
might have been "due in part to an increase
of social drinking occasioned by entertain-
ing soldiers embarking for and returning
from overseas." Second, the unhappiness
caused by the war-time absence of men
turned more women to drink. Jolliffe clev-
erly deduced that the absence of men, and
not worry about men's safety in combat,
explained the rise, incidentally, by noting
that female admissions were almost as large
in 1919 as in 1918, even though hostilities
had ceased by the latter year.
In 1990, I exchanged correspondence
with the late Mark Keller, longtime editor of
the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, who worked
as Jolliffe's editorial and research assistant in
the 1930s. Keller noted that a mixup had
occurred in the collection of data for Jolliffe's
Bellevue admissions paper. He explained
that both of Jolliffe's hypotheses for the fe-
male admissions spike were moot because
the increase in the proportion of female ad-
missions never actually happened. A change
in admissions-recording practices, he ex-
plained, was the source of the apparent spike.
The previous [pre-19181 and later [post-19191
statistics were filed by the famous Dr. Menas
Sarcos Gregory. During the war he went into
Government service. The, deputy who substi-
tuted for him...did something different from
Gregory. He filed "all" the: alcoholic admis-
sions in the entire Bellevue Hospital, whereas
Gregory used to file only the Alcoholic Ward
admissions, in the old days, and the Psychiatric
Division admissions since it got its new build-
ing. This obviously accounted for the seeming
increase of female admissions in those two
years; for apparently there was a policy of ad-
mitting most drunken women to the general
medical wards rather than to the 'alcoholic
ward' in Psycho. Likely, too, that in the old
Alcoholic Ward (pre-1930s) there wasn't much
room for women.--This error in the 1936 Sci-
ence paper had never been corrected.
Keller's statement implies that more than
the spike was awry in Jolliffe's admissions
trend-lines. If the female admissions were
underreported in years before and after 1918
and 1919, then both female admissions and,
by extension, total admissions' trends report-
ed in Jolliffe's paper are likely problematic.
Keller noted that he had intended on
more than one occasion to write Science
about the matter, to illustrate, he said, the
"vagaries of hypothesizing," but he appar-
ently never got around to it.
The data offered in Jolliffe's 60-year-old
paper retain more than merely archaic inter-
est. Figures relating to alcoholism admissions
and alcohol consumption during national
prohibition are used and of interest to, for
example, both sides in the current national
debate over drug decriminalization. (see, for
example, E. A. Nadelmann, Letters, 1 Dec.
1989, P. 1104)
I hope and trust that Keller and the good
Dr. Jolliffe would have been relieved and
pleased to see this little matter finally
cleared up!