On December 11, 1951, in the labs of French pharmaceutical company Rhône-Poulenc, chemist Paul Charpentier concocted a drug that would change the field of psychiatry forever.
Charpentier hadn’t intended to spark a revolution; he was actually trying to make a better antihistamine. But by tweaking an existing drug called promazine, he ended up making a new compound called chlorpromazine. The drug was passed on to a surgeon by the name of Henri Laborit, who was on the hunt for a more effective anesthetic. He noticed it produced a calming effect in his patients, and in 1952 Laborit convinced colleagues at a military hospital in Paris to give the drug to
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