American medical doctor and specialist in the treatment of
alcoholism. He was Director of the Towns Hospital in New York City in the 1930s, during which time
Bill Wilson, a future co-founder of the self-help movement
Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), was admitted on three separate occasions for alcoholism. Silkworth had a profound influence on Wilson and encouraged him to realize that alcoholism was more than just an issue of moral weakness. He introduced Wilson to the idea that alcoholism had a pathological disease-like basis.