We offer an alternate route for investigating soliton solutions in hyd
rogen-bonded chains. This is done by examining a class of systems of t
wo coupled real scalar fields. We show that this route allows investig
ating several models for hydrogen-bonded chains in a unified manner. W
e also show how to investigate interesting issues, in particular the o
ne concerning classical or linear stability of solitonic solutions. (C
) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.