Medicine: Psychic Energizer

Medical researchers reported last week that they have found a sort of untran-quilizer—a drug that shows promise in treating mental patients suffering from depression. It is no new chemical, but iproniazid (trade name: Marsilid), first cousin of isoniazid and a veteran of the 1951 campaign against tuberculosis. When it was given to TB patients at New York City's Sea View Hospital, they became happy, ate ravenously, gained weight and started dancing in the wards (TIME, March 3, 1952). Iproniazid was soon retired from widespread use because it produced undesirable side effects, such as dizziness, constipation, difficulty in urination, and neuritis.

Meanwhile, psychiatrists were having a field day with ataraxics—drugs to help bring about mental wellbeing. They found plenty of tranquilizers, excellent for overactive, agitated patients, but none that was much good for those at the opposite end of the scale, suffering from depression; in fact, some tranquilizers induced worsened depression. Then researchers hit on half-forgotten iproniazid. At New York's Rockland State Hospital three doctors gave the drug to 14 patients suffering from depression for which there was no cause to be found in physical illness, got good results in twelve, had to stop the drug in two cases because of unfavorable side effects. One woman, who showed as good improvement as any, had been in the hospital 26 years. Several cases suffered from hebephrenia or catatonic schizophrenia—conditions that are notoriously resistant to any treatment. Three patients whose mental illness had its roots in physical disease (one had had syphilis) did not respond. Emphasizing the distinction between the effects of iproniazid and previously used ataraxics, Rockland's Research Director Nathan S. Kline called it not a tranquilizer but a "psychic energizer."

A few psychiatrists have tried iproniazid on a handful of office patients. They reported excitingly good results in cases of depression lasting as long as six years. But use of iproniazid for such patients is tricky: the drug is powerful and potentially dangerous. Strictly a prescription item, best used in hospitals, iproniazid is far from being everybody's happiness pill.