Transcription contributed by Martie Callihan 12 January 2005

Page
781

J. L. STEPHENS, M. D., special opium cure, Lebanon, was born at Deerfield, Warren Co., Ohio, Aug. 20, 1838; he is the son of Aaron Stephens, deceased, whose biography appears elsewhere in this work. Our subject received his medical education at the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1859, and for a year and a half thereafter he practiced his profession in Dayton. Ohio. In 1861, after the breaking-out of the rebellion, he was appointed Brigade Surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland by Abraham Lincoln, and in that capacity continued three years. In 1863, he married Miss Medora Carter, of Nashville, Term., who died eighteen months after marriage, leaving one child, Medora, who is new living with her father. For ten years after leaving the army. Dr. Stephens practiced medicine in the South, principally in Louisiana, and during four years of his residence there he occupied a seat in the State Legislature. On the 27th of October, 1879, he was again married to Miss Hattie Poor, a native of Pennsylvania. While in the practice of his profession in New Orleans, Dr. Stephens discovered a mode of treatment for the opium habit, which was found to be more efficacious than any hitherto practiced. Having experimented with the cure in several cities, among which were New York. Philadelphia. Richmond. Va., and Cincinnati, and brought it to a state of perfection, he, in 1879, established a sanitarium one mile south of Lebanon for the cure of the opium and morphine habit Since that time, more than one thousand persons have been patients of the establishment, and several thousand persons in different parts of the country have received the benefit of his treatment Among his patients have been persons distinguished as lawyers, physicians, clergymen, and men who have held high official positions. His place is visited by people from all parts of the continent. With one or two exceptions, he has had patients from every State in the Union. Before this discovery, there was no cure known for the opium habit but that called "tapering off," and in this the suffering is so intense, and so terribly severe, that patients who have gone through it say they would prefer death tenfold rather than to experience a repetition of the treatment. Under