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Treadway, Walter Lewis. ‘Dedication and Opening of the Lexington Narcotic Farm.' IN: United States Treasury Department Public Health Reports. Issued Weekly by the United States Public Health Service. Volume 50, Number 31. August 2, 1935. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1935. From the library of Dr. C.B. Farrar with his notation ‘First U.S. Narcotic Farm' in ink on the upper wrapper. Tall 8vo., orig. printed self-wrappers, pp. iii, 985-1015. Treadway's piece runs from pp.996-1000 and also has 4 photographic illustrations of the facility on 1 leaf, recto/verso.Some discolouration on the spine edge and bottom edge of the upper wrapper (from sun) o/w an about fine copy of a scarce item.
The United States Narcotic Farm opened in May, 1935 as a prison hospital initially run by the U.S. Public Health Service, and after undergoing several name changes it became a U.S. federal prison in 1974. Dr. Walter Treadway, a psychiatrist, was the Assistant-General in charge of the mental hygiene division, United States Public Health Service, 1922-1939. When opened its mandate was to treat people ‘voluntarily' who were admitted with drug abuse issues. The facility used mostly experimental treatments and it was the first of its kind in the United States, and included a farm where patients could work. While some patients did indeed enter voluntarily for treatment, a sizable proportion of those admitted were either motivated to do so in order to avoid a prison sentence or mandated to do so as part of federal sentencing. The facility was so well-known that it was mentioned in film and literature. In the film adaptation of Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm, the character of ‘Frankie' returns to Chicago after being ‘detoxed at the Lexington Medical Centre' and in Burrough's Junkie, the ‘main character spends a period of time at Lexington, where he checks himself in voluntarily in order to quit his heroin addiction. In fact Burroughs was a patient at the facility.'