1936

Neuropsychiatric market for SK&F’s Benzedrine Sulfate (amphetamine) blossoms following Myron Prinzmetal’s 1935 studies on effectiveness of drug for narcolepsy (Rasmussen II, 303-304) and then Abraham Myerson’s report that the drug had an ameliorative effect in “certain depressed neuroses” (305). Myerson became the drug’s most influential advocate: “. . . by 1938 there was substantial clinical evidence that amphetamine was not effective for schizophrenia or for the severe depression treated mainly in mental institutions, and was only useful as an adjunct to talking therapy, if at all. In contrast, expert opinion held amphetamine to be a promising therapy for milder neurotic depressions, whether caused by adverse events (“reactive”) or by constitutional factors (“endogenous”) (312). In Dec, 1937, AMA Council accepted Benzedrine for use in narcolepsy and postencephalitic Parkinsonism and also for mood elevation in depression, but only among institutionalized patients. By then, there was already underground usage of the drug among college students (312-13). Despite AMA proviso, SK&F marketing from the start included generalists and stressed the kind of depression (re Myerson’s Anhedonia) seen by GPs, e.g., elderly, menopausal, chronic illness sufferers (316-17). By end of WWII, about a million tabs of amphetamine were being consumed daily in America for psychiatric illness, and at least as much again for weight loss. “Benzedrine thus can fairly be called the first ‘anti-depressant,’ a term that appears in promotional material for the drug in the mid-1940s, if by this we mean a drug widely prescribed and consumed to elevate mood for indefinite periods in depressed outpatients” (319). Marketing and widespread use of amphetamine as an anti-depressant in 40s & 50s, may have “played an important early role in advancing the recognition of Anhedonia as a fundamental feature of depression” (321).