Selden Daskam Bacon (10 September 1909 in

Pleasantville, New York Pleasantville is a village in the town of Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located 30 miles north of Manhattan. The village population was 7,019 at the 2010 census. Pleasantville is home to the secondary camp ...

– 6 December 1992 in

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the s ...

, Massachusetts)Straus, R. "In Memoriam Selden D. Bacon 1909-1992." ''Journal of Studies on Alcohol'' 54.2 (1993): 130-132. ''Scopus''®. Web. 30 June 2014. was a Yale professor of sociology and an

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol (drug), alcohol that results in significant Mental health, mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognize ...

researcher. He was director of the

Center of Alcohol Studies The Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS) is a multidisciplinary research institute located in the Busch Campus of Rutgers University, which performs clinical and biomedical research on alcohol use and misuse. The center was originally at Yale Universit ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

from 1962 to 1975. Together with

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 othe ...

and Howard W. Haggard, he was an important developer of the disease model of alcohol addiction in the 1940s.

Biography

Selden D. Bacon claimed ancestry to

Sir Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both n ...

from several generations back. His father, Selden Bacon, was a constitutional attorney who argued against the constitutionality of

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...

(the 18th amendment) in the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. Bacon was also the son of the author Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon (responsible for the first

Girl Scout Girl Guides (known as Girl Scouts in the United States and some other countries) is a worldwide movement, originally and largely still designed for girls and women only. The movement began in 1909 when girls requested to join the then-grassroot ...

br>Guidebook
and first cousin to preacher and writer

Leonard Bacon Reverend Leonard Bacon (February 19, 1802 – December 24, 1881) was an American Congregational preacher and writer. He held the pulpit of the First Church New Haven and was later professor of church history and polity at Yale College. Biograp ...

. Bacon earned three degrees from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

: a B.A., M.A. in government in 1934, and Ph.D. in sociology in 1939.Fillmore, Kaye Middleton. "Selden Daskam Bacon (1909-1992)." ''Addiction'' 88.4 (1993): 567-570. ''Academic Search Premier''. Web. 30 June 2014. He taught sociology at

Pennsylvania State College The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became ...

(today Penn State University) from 1937 to 1939 and then at Yale. He became full professor at Yale in 1956. Bacon's initial research interest was in

criminology Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...

. His interest in alcohol studies began when the Connecticut War Council asked him to do a study that compared people in jail for alcohol-related charges to those for other charges, because of a perceived lack of manpower during the war due to drunkenness arrests. During this time, Bacon first got in touch with the alcohol researches at Yale. In 1944 with the help of the Connecticut Prison Association, Bacon helped start the Yale Plan Clinics, the first public clinics for alcoholics that he thought of after conducting this study in Connecticut jails. After his contact with Yale researchers at the Laboratory of Applied Physiology (LAP), which later became the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, he was invited to join as a part-time researcher and part-time sociology instructor. In 1945, he published a review on the movie The Lost Weekend, whose main character was an

alcoholic Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomin ...

, in the Yale Center's

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

. He was appointed director of the LAP and the Summer School of Alcohol Studies from 1950 to 1962. He was also a chairperson to the Connecticut Commission on Alcoholism. In 1962, the Center and Bacon as its director moved to Rutgers University. He retired in 1975. He died of a heart attack at age 83 at Martha's Vineyard, where his retirement home was located."Selden Bacon, at 83; Founded the Center of Alcohol Studies." ''Boston Globe'' 10 Dec. 1992: 63. ''NewsBank - Archives''. Web. 30 June 2014.

Selected publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bacon, Selden D. 1909 births 1992 deaths Yale College alumni Yale University faculty Rutgers University faculty People from Pleasantville, New York Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni