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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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instead of a constant rising curve which there had been forever. The number of people in state hospitals was continually increasing; now in ‘59 for the first time there was a slight drop in the curve and the number of discharges of people who had been treated was very much increased. For instance, in New York State people who were recently admitted could be gotten out in a few months, or possibly even sooner if they had been more energetically treated, and there began to be as much as a 75 percent increase in discharges from the state mental hospitals in New York State. This was terribly exciting for us.

Nate Klein, in ‘56 as I recall it or ‘57, announced that a drug called Marsalid, which had been first used under the name of Iproniazid for tuberculosis, would bring severely depressed patients out of their depressions. He had thought about the use of this drug after hearing about the mood elevation of TB patients who had been given it and seeing a picture of them. Maybe you recall that picture in the New York Herald-Tribune, the people at Seaview Hospital, who had been really condemned to death and who had been given Iproniazid and Isoniazid and then were dancing in the corridors. And he remembered this picture and noticed that the mood elevation was so great that he thought he would try it on these people who were severely depressed in Rockland State Hospital.

He did try it and he found that Marsalid would bring a number of them out of these deep depressions. Now, Marsalid





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