Category Archives: Advertising

Mornidine advertisement, 1959.
Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 81, No. 1, p. 59.

Now she can cook breakfast again
… when you prescribe new MORNIDINE (brand of pipamazine)
A new drug with specific effectiveness in nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, Mornidine eliminates the ordeal of morning sickness.
With its selective action on the vomiting center, or the medullary chemoreceptor “trigger zone,” Mornidine possesses the advantages of the phenothiazine drugs without unwanted tranquilizing activity.
Doses of 5 to 10 mg., repeated at intervals of six to eight hours, provide excellent relief all day. In patients who are unable to retain oral medication when first seen, Mornidine may be administered intramuscularly in doses of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
Mornidine is supplied as tablets of 5 mg. and as ampuls of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
G. D. Searle & Co. of Canada Ltd. 247 Queen St., E., Brampton, Ont.

• * *
  Historical footnote:
  Pipamazine (Mornidine) was removed from the U.S. market in July 1969, following reports of liver toxicity.

Quaaludes were a sedative and hypnotic used as a sleeping aid between 1962 and 1985. They were, in a word (and in every sense of that word), volatile. Many of the helpless insomniacs and anxiety sufferers who took the drug to get a little shuteye ended up becoming manic, seizing, convulsing, vomiting, and sometimes even dying.

Or, they ended up addicted. Quaaludes are now considered a Schedule 1 drug (like heroin and LSD), but even before being approved by the FDA, research pointed to possible issues of dependence and abuse. By the 1970s, Quaaludes had become a wildly popular street drug. In 1982 alone, there were 2,764 reported emergency room visits as a result of Quaalude use.

Valium advertisement, 1970.
Hospital & Community Psychiatry, Vol. 21, No. 5.

35, single and psychoneurotic
The purser on her cruise ship took the last snapshot of Jan. You probably see many such Jans in your practice. The unmarrieds with low self-esteem. Jan never found a man to measure up to her father. Now she realizes she’s in a losing pattern — and that she may never marry. Valium (diazepam) can be a useful adjunct in the therapy of the tense, over anxious patient who has a neurotic sense of failure, guilt or loss. Over the years, Valium has proven its value in the relief of psychoneurotic states — anxiety, apprehension, agitation, alone or with depressive symptoms. Valium 10-mg tablets help relieve the emotional “storms” of psychoneurotic tension and the depressive symptoms that can go hand-in-hand with it. Valium 2-mg or 5-mg tablets, t.i.d. or q.i.d., are usually sufficient for milder tension and anxiety states. An h.s. dose added to the t.i.d. dosage often facilitates a good night’s rest.
VALIUM® (diazepam) for psychoneurotic states manifested by psychic tension and depressive symptoms
Indications: Tension and anxiety states; somatic complaints which are concomitants of emotional factors; psychoneurotic states manifested by tension, anxiety, apprehension, fatigue, depressive symptoms or agitation; acute agitation, tremor, delirium tremens and hallucinosis due to acute alcohol withdrawal; adjunctively in skeletal muscle spasm due to reflex spasm to local pathology, spasticity caused by upper motor neuron disorders, athetosis, stiff-man syndrome, convulsive disorders (not for sole therapy.)
Contraindications: Known hypersensitivity to the drug. Children under 6 months of age. Acute narrow angle glaucoma.
Side Effects: Drowsiness, confusion, diplopia, hypotension, changes in libido, nausea, fatigue, depression, dysarthria, jaundice, skin rash, ataxia, constipation, headache, incontinence, changes in salivation, slurred speech, tremor, vertigo, urinary retention, blurred vision. Paradoxical reactions such as acute hyperexcited states, anxiety, hallucinations, increased muscle spasticity, insomnia, rage, sleep disturbances, stimulation, have been reported; should these occur, discontinue drug. Isolated reports of neutropenia, jaundice; periodic blood counts and liver function tests advisable during long-term therapy.
Roche Laboratories ~ Division of Hoffmann LaRoche Inc. Nulley New Jersey 07110.

PTZ/Metrazol was used to provide convulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. Originally, it was intended to be a circulatory and respiratory stimulant, but neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna discovered that high doses caused convulsions, so he decided to treat schizophrenics with it.

As damning as that sounds for Meduna, convulsive therapy is actually an effective, last-resort psychiatric treatment still used today. PTZ/Metrazol has since been replaced by electric shocks as the preferred mechanism for convulsive therapy, a treatment that can effectively induce seizures to provide (often temporary) relief to people suffering from major depressive disorder, mania, and catatonia.

While convulsive therapy can be effective, PTZ/Metrazol was an overzealously convulsive drug. It was pulled off the market — after 48 years — for causing uncontrollable seizures, pulled muscles, and spine fractures in an estimated 42% of patients.

aldwin’s Nervous Pills, circa 1883

Cures nervousness, irritability of temper,
want of strength and energy,
fear, dread, neuralgia,
hysteria, disturbed sleep,
melancholy, insomnia,
and all nerve pains and diseases.

PRICE 1’1½d. & 2’9 PER BOX
POST FREE.

sources

http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/medicineshow.html

https://allthatsinteresting.com/fda-mistakes/3