David Healy follows his widely praised study, "The Antidepressant
Era," with an even more ambitious and dramatic story: the discovery
and development of antipsychotic medication. Healy argues that the
discovery of chlorpromazine (more generally known as Thorazine) is
as significant in the history of medicine as the discovery of
penicillin, reminding readers of the worldwide prevalence of
insanity within living memory.
But Healy tells not of the triumph of science but of a stream of
fruitful accidents, of technological discovery leading
neuroscientific research, of fierce professional competition and
the backlash of the antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s. A
chemical treatment was developed for one purpose, and as long as
some theoretical rationale could be found, doctors administered it
to the insane patients in their care to see if it would help.
Sometimes it did, dramatically. Why these treatments worked, Healy
argues provocatively, was, and often still is, a mystery.
Nonetheless, such discoveries made and unmade academic reputations
and inspired intense politicking for the Nobel Prize.
Once pharmaceutical companies recognized the commercial
potential of antipsychotic medications, financial as well as
clinical pressures drove the development of ever more aggressively
marketed medications. With verve and immense learning, Healy tells
a story with surprising implications in a book that will become the
leading scholarly work on its compelling subject.
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