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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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reach them, then schizophrenia or deep depression could be alleviated.

Q:

But this was your vision, that it could be.

Lasker:

Yes, this was my vision, that it could be,; I was sure it could be, and Florence Mahoney felt the same. But we had very, very uphill work in this.

Q:

You had nothing to substantiate this though.

Lasker:

Only the business of pellagra and the business of syphilis, that people who had syphilis also had severe mental conditions.

So, we thought that there had to be some explanation and that it should be explored.

Well, fortunately, by some chance, we were invited to a conference on the use of new drugs in mental illness in January or February of 1953, and I remember Miss Macdonough was there and I think Mrs. McSweeney. I'm not sure about Mike Gorman. And we had for the first time people reporting on the usefulness of tranquilizing drugs, Serpl and Thorazine, which were the first, in schizophrenia and in people who were in state mental hospitals, in an agitated state.

We also heard about the usefulness of Thorazine in severe alcoholic states. This conference made an enormous impression





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