At the beginning of the 1960s, the Irish psychiatrist Thomas Bewley, who has died aged 95, did not agree with the prevailing view that addiction was purely a moral issue, arising from a dissolute lifestyle, or that it was outside medicine’s remit. His research brought lasting change, creating an enlightened, more humane view of drug dependency.
In 1960, Bewley was working at Tooting Bec hospital, a vast mental asylum in south London. When his colleague Griff Edwards said he knew of people living rough who would like treatment for their alcohol addiction, Bewley stepped forward to take care of them.
