E. Morton Jellinek

Elvin Morton "Bunky" Jellinek (15 August 1890 – 22 October 1963), E. Morton Jellinek, or most often, E. M. Jellinek, was a biostatistician, physiologist, and an alcoholism researcher, fluent in nine languages and able to communicate in four others. The son of Markus Erwin Marcel Jellinek (1858–1939) and Rose Jellinek (1867–1966), née Jacobson (a. k. a. the opera singer Marcella Lindh), he was born in New York City and died at the desk of his study at Stanford University on 22 October 1963.

Jellinek studied biostatistics and physiology at the University of Berlin from 1908 to 1910. He then studied philosophy, philology, anthropology, and theology for two years at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble. He was also enrolled, apparently concurrently, at the University of Leipzig from 25 November 1911 to 29 July 1913, and from 22 November 1913 to 2 December 1914 for classes in languages, linguistics and cultural history. During the 1920s, he conducted research in Sierra Leone and at Tela, Honduras. In the 1930s he returned to the U. S. A. and worked at the Worcester State Hospital, Worcester, Massachusetts, from whence he was commissioned to conduct a study for the Research Council on Problems of Alcohol. The eventual outcome of his study was the 1942 book, Alcohol Addiction and Chronic Alcoholism. From 1941 to 1952, he was Associate Professor of Applied Physiology at Yale University. In 1941 he was managing editor of the newly established Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol (now the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs). In 1950 he was engaged by the World Health Organization in Geneva as a consultant on alcoholism, and made significant contributions to the work of the Alcoholism Sub committee of the WHO's Expert Committee on Mental Health. The Second Report of the Alcoholism Subcommittee, published in August 1952, have reproduced in its 2nd Annex, the text of an important communication that Jellinek gave to the first European Seminar on Alcoholism in Copenhagen in October 1951. In that conference, he exposed his work on the Phases of alcoholic addiction and he presented a detailed Chart (page 30) exposing the progressive nature of alcoholism. That chart is considered as the 1st version of the future Jellinek's Curve that some other people, including Max Glatt, would eventually draw from his work. Upon his retirement from the WHO in the late 1950s, he returned to the USA. In 1958 he joined the Psychiatry Schools of both the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta, and in 1962, he moved to Stanford University in California, where he remained until his death.

Addiction researcher Griffith Edwards (2002, p. 98) holds that, in his opinion, Jellinek's The Disease Concept of Alcoholism was a work of outstanding scholarship based on a careful consideration of the available evidence.

In post war 1946, various pharmaceutical chemicals were in short supply for making medicines. A headache remedy manufacturer found that supplies of one of its remedy’s three constituent chemicals was running out. They asked Jellinek, then at Yale, to test whether the absence of that particular chemical would affect the drug’s efficacy in any way. Jellinek set up a complex trial – with 199 subjects, divided randomly into four test groups – involving various permutations of the three drug constituents, with a placebo as a scientific control. Each group took a test remedy for two weeks at a time. The trial lasted eight weeks, by the end of which each group had taken each of the test drugs, albeit in a different sequence. Over the entire population of 199 subjects, 120 of the subjects (~60%) responded to the placebo, and 79 did not. The trial also demonstrated that the chemical in question significantly contributed to the remedy's efficacy. In the process of examining the data produced by his trial, Jellinek discovered that there was a significant difference in responses to the active chemicals between the 120 who had responded to the placebo and the 79 who did not. He (1946, p. 90) described the former group as being "reactors to placebo", and this seems to be the first time that anyone had spoken of either "placebo reactions" or "placebo responses".

The Jellinek Memorial Award, or Jellinek Award, is an award presented annually by the Jellinek Memorial Fund in Jellinek's honor. It is given to a scientist who has made an outstanding contribution to research on alcohol or alcoholism. Winners receive a cash prize of US$5,000, as well as a bust of Jellinek with a personalized inscription.

Haggard, H. W. & Jellinek, E. M., Alcohol Explored, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., (Garden City), 1942. Jellinek, E. M. (ed), Alcohol Addiction and Chronic Alcoholism, Yale University Press, (New Haven), 1942. Jellinek, E. M. "Clinical Tests on Comparative Effectiveness of Analgesic Drugs", Biometrics Bulletin, Vol.2, No.5, (October 1946), pp. 87–91. Jellinek, E. M., "Phases in the Drinking History of Alcoholics: Analysis of a Survey Conducted by the Official Organ of Alcoholics Anonymous", Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Vol.7, (1946), pp. 1–88. Jellinek, E. M., The Disease Concept of Alcoholism, Hillhouse, (New Haven), 1960.

Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014). Bejarano, W., "Mystery and Speculations: An Introduction to E. M. Jellinek’s Redemption", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.33 41. Ward, J. H., "E. M. Jellinek: The Hungarian Connection", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.42 54. Bariahtaris, C., "The Family of E. M. Jellinek: Documenting a History", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.55 61. Goldstein, S., "The "Banana Book" by E. M. Jellinek", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.62 66. Thomas, K., "E. M. Jellinek: The Worcester Hospital Years (1930 1939)", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.67 72. Stewart, M., "Mark Keller and E. M. Jellinek", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.73 77. Roizen, R., "The Jellinek Project: Summing Up, So Far", Substance Abuse Library and Information Studies: Proceedings of the 36th Annual SALIS Conference, (May 1, 2014), pp.78 82.