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This article focuses on alcoholism and the concept of disease. Removing the status of disease from drinking behavior does not make medical practice redundant for other aspects of alcoholism. In fact the convene is true, because by defining out what isn't medical, it is possible to define in what is. There are actually many aspects of alcoholism that conform to the criteria of disease, which are distressing and dangerous, and which are amenable to medical treatment. Examples are cirrhosis, peptic ulceration, neuropathy, and myocarditis. The withdrawal syndrome itself with its symptoms of anxiety, tremulousness, nausea and sweating, as well as delirium tremens, organic cerebral reactions, psychotic reactions and convulsions, all require appropriate and urgent medical therapy. Specifying what is and what isn't a disease in the medical sense determines the patient's expectations of his treatment. Likewise the doctor is not put in the position where he is exasperated by the failure of his treatment which in any case was not appropriate and could not be expected to produce a cure.

The article examines possible means to be employed on how to go about drunkenness offenders. 132 persons charged with drunkenness offenses and who were kept in custody overnight, were interviewed before the appearance in Camberwell Magistrates' Court. The data collected from the offenders suggested that they did not on the whole perceive themselves or their problems as a disease, alcoholism, in the medical sense. According to the authors, a proper understanding of the concept of alcoholism as well as an awareness of the actual needs and expectations of those for whom it concerns would help frame a suitable and relevant answer.