A Social History of the Minor Tranquillisers

This text presents an historical account chronicling the invention, sale, use, and public reaction to such minor tranquillisers as Valium, Librium, and Miltown. Depicting the complexities of tranquillizer use, Smith shows how the minor tranquillisers rose to and fell from popularity among prescribers and takers through the use of research data, historical and anecdotal information, and sociological materials - media, marketing approaches, and social discourse. Smith enables readers to greater understand what and how mistakes were made during this drug-taking phenomenon in hopes of preventing the same detrimental cycle as new drugs and medicines are introduced. Many provocative philosophical and social issues relating to the decline of the use of tranquillisers as medication are explored in this volume, including details of congressional hearings on the prescription and marketing of tranquillisers as well as the negative publicity in the 1950s and 1960s that contributed to the decline of these drugs. It is a social history which should be read by practicing physicians and pharmacists, medical historians and ethicists, and medical and pharmacy faculty. Medical sociologists and psychologists ought to find this volume to have significant impact in their understanding as will laypersons interested in the issues which continue to surround and permeate the use of minor tranquillisers in our society.