AbstractAdvancing ideas pioneered in the United States of America, Australian medical reformers and their lay supporters persuaded colonial governments in the late nineteenth century to recognize that alcohol dependence was a treatable disease. In practice, that recognition was only partial. While inebriates legislation was enacted, the state never provided sufficient resources for adequate specialized treatment facilities to be developed. By the 1930s, the first wave of enthusiasm for specific institutional treatment of alcohol dependence had receded, and the treatment movement was in decline. Reasons are suggested for the failure of the movement.