Valium: Miltown Magic | 1

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Anxiety. It’s something everyone experiences at some point in their lives, but for centuries doctors had no effective way to treat it. They could send patients on rest cures, order them to do nothing at all, or prescribe barbiturates that depressed the central nervous system, easily leading to overdose and death.

Finally, in the mid-1950s, chemists discovered a new class of drugs: the minor tranquilizers. The most famous of these was Valium, which would go on to become the most prescribed drug in the United States.

But Valium owes its success to its lesser known predecessor Miltown, which changed the way Americans thought about anxiety.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American innovations, add free on Amazon music, download
0:06.0	the app today.
0:14.1	It's 1906, New York City, and a young man named Ben Jones is sitting in an exam room waiting
0:20.2	to see his doctor.
0:22.0	It's a cool spring day, but Ben's forehead is dripping with sweat.
0:26.8	One jumps, startled by the sound of the door opening, in walks the doctor, tall, with
0:31.9	graying hair at his temples.
0:33.8	Mr. Jones, I'm sorry you're back.
0:36.3	Is it still your nerves?
0:38.0	I still can't sleep, I hardly eat.
0:40.5	There's this knot in my stomach that just never goes away.
0:43.4	Every time I close my eyes, I have these visions of being run over by a horse and buggy.
0:48.3	I can't take it anymore, Doc.
0:50.8	The doctor nods, puts his deathoscope in his ears, and listens to Ben's chest.
0:56.2	He can hear the man's heart beating, as if he just ran a mile.
1:00.1	Did you try that new tonic I recommended?
1:02.8	I did, but it didn't help.
1:04.7	I still couldn't sleep a wink.
1:06.9	The doctor sits down in a chair and looks at his patient.
1:10.1	The man is pale and thin with dark circles under his eyes.
1:13.7	He is clearly suffering.
1:15.4	There are places upstate that you could go, take a rescue and give your nerves a break.
	...

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