Max Meier Glatt
Authors: C. Richmond
Journal: BMJ (2002)

A doctor who survived Dachau to become a pioneer in alcoholism treatment

Max Glatt established the medical treatment of alcoholism in Britain, destigmatising the condition and changing the official perception of it from moral failing to treatable medical condition. His alcoholism unit at St Bernard's Hospital, Ealing, in the 1960s was imitated widely—though perhaps not widely enough—and the respect he engendered changed perceptions of the hospital from bin to centre of excellence that attracted ambitious and high calibre trainees.

He was born in Berlin into a middle class Orthodox Jewish family and qualified in neurological medicine at Leipzig in 1937. Antisemitic legislation barred him obtaining a university appointment, and he attempted to escape to Holland with three other people. He succeeded; the other three were caught and arrested; he felt morally unable to leave them behind and gave himself up; the other three were then released. From Dachau in 1940 he was allowed to buy his freedom in the form of a visa to South America. He travelled via England, where he was interned as an enemy alien and shipped to Australia, but in 1942 he found his way back, and was given a job treating traumatised soldiers.


In 1950 the level of alcohol consumption was at a historically low level, but serious alcoholics did exist and were relegated to the back wards of mental institutions. Demobbed doctors from the services went into the choicer jobs. Glatt, who as a German Jewish refugee was something of an outsider, one day found himself chatting to a group of alcoholics at Warlingham Park, and learnt that they were tired of making elephants in the occupational therapy department. He decided to take on their care, establishing a therapeutic community and encouraging patients to go out to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In 1951, in a landmark silly decision, the Ministry of Health refused him permission to attend a World Health Organization conference on alcoholism on the grounds that the expense was unmerited as “there was no alcoholism in England and Wales.” Ten years later Glatt founded his unit for alcoholism and drug addiction at St Bernard's. Within a few years it was a centre of excellence. A decade later he took on a similar unit at University College Hospital. 




He set up the first prison alcoholism unit, at Wormwood Scrubs in west London. The prisoners loved him and named their football team the Glatt Dynamos. Although the unit had a one year waiting list it was closed in March as the Prison Service decided that there was adequate provision elsewhere. He worked there and at the Charter Nightingale Hospital until shortly before his death.

Glatt was able gently and logically to point out to alcoholics that those who said they could take a drink or leave it invariably took it and were thus deluding themselves; that by the time a person admitted they had an alcohol problem it was already obvious to other people; and that there was little chance of them returning to normal social drinking and that it was better to leave the drinking to others.

As editor of Addiction from 1961 to 1978, he turned it from a parochial British journal publishing poor research into a high quality publication with worldwide contributors and readers, and publishing abstracts in French and German. He received his FRCPsych in 1971 and was made an honorary fellow in 1985. The American Council on Alcoholism gave him an award for “outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge about alcoholism.” He received many other distinguished awards from all over the world, but received less recognition in Britain, his adopted country.

Glatt remained an Orthodox Jew but also a true European of the old school. He loved Berlin and often returned there as his former home. His humour, grace of spirit, forgiving nature, compassion, and freedom from anger, bitterness or censure endeared him to his colleagues and patients. Glatt never spoke of his time in a concentration camp. He sympathised with the underdog and had a Judaic respect for justice and learning. He wrote several books on alcoholism and addiction, taught at several universities, and advised governments and the WHO. He never retired, and worked until a fall shortly before his death aged 90.

He leaves a wife, Gisella, herself a concentration camp survivor; a son; and two grandchildren.

Max Meier Glatt, addictions specialist (b 1912; q Leipzig 1937; FRCPsych), died 14 May 2002.