Chlorpromazine came from rocket fuel and a failed antimalarial. That’s not a metaphor.
Background
The drugs psychiatrists prescribe daily were rarely discovered by design. Chlorpromazine started as a failed antimalarial. The first monoamine oxidase inhibitor grew out of leftover V2 rocket fuel hydrazine. This book tells those stories, and argues that the social, political, and biographical worlds around scientists shaped psychopharmacology as much as any laboratory did.
Pharmacy of the Mind covers six sections: the origin stories of antipsychotics, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and lithium; the biographies of key neuroscientists like Golgi and Ramón y Cajal; the intersection of 20th-century war and drug discovery; and a closing argument for the role of serendipity and humanist values in science.
The book’s most gripping material traces how chlorpromazine quieted a manic patient in 1952 after French surgeon Henri Laborit noticed the calming effects of antihistamines and convinced reluctant psychiatrists to try the drug. That success cascaded into tricyclic antidepressants. Rocket-fuel hydrazine became isoniazid for tuberculosis and then, in its failed twin iproniazid, the first “psychic energizer” — and the monoamine hypothesis of depression was born.
Reviewer Joseph Truett finds the biographical sections compelling but criticizes the book for lacking a clear throughline. He notes the author’s own works dominate the citations, which limits the reader’s ability to explore further. The book is marketed to trainees and general readers, though psychiatrists will find useful depth on stories they know only superficially. Truett sees a subtler thesis beneath the serendipity narrative. Psychopharmacology’s foundations were built in the shadow of persecution, displacement, and war.
The book’s author, Wallace Mendelson, is a retired Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology at the University of Chicago and a former section chief of Sleep Studies at the National Institute of Mental Health. His other books include The Curious History of Medicines in Psychiatry.
The book runs 201 pages and is currently free on Kindle.
— Chris Aiken, MD
Director, Psych Partners
Editor in Chief, Carlat Psychiatry Report
