How amytal changed psychopharmacy: off-label uses of sodium amytal (1920-40).

In the early 1930s, American neurologist and psychiatrist William Bleckwenn used sodium amytal to render catatonic patients responsive, so that he could engage in talk therapy. Bleckwenn found a new, 'off-label' use for this anaesthetic and anxiolytic medication in psychiatry and, in doing so, allowed for important discoveries in the diagnosis and treatment of catatonia. Pharmacological textbooks reveal a 'label', while the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office reveals explorations 'off label' of barbiturates. The 'off-label' use of barbiturates facilitated talk therapy, heralding an important shift in psychopharmacy. Drugs previously only used as chemical restraints became a form of treatment for specific psychiatric diseases. The current strictures against off-label prescribing are overprescriptive and close off innovative new uses.

Sodium amobarbital: historical perspectives and neurorehabilitation clinical caveats.

The sodium amobarbital (amytal) (SA) interview is a technique that has been utilized in the treatment of a variety of disorders since its introduction in 1929. Since that time, there has been an assortment of research conducted showing its value in both differential diagnosis and treatment of multiple conditions. Notwithstanding the substantive amount of experience with the technique and its application to a myriad number of clinical conditions, it remains a seldom used procedure in clinical practice and certainly in neurorehabilitation. This paper will review the history of SA, as well as summarize the literature published over the past two decades on the clinical applications of SA to provide readers with a foundation for the utility of this agent, as well as the sodium amytal interview (SAI) in neurorehabilitation clinical practice. Special emphasis will be placed on the use of the SAI in individuals with functional disorders that may be seen in the neurorehabilitation setting, as well as various classes of pain disorders.

The making of "truth serum".

This essay reconstructs a social and cultural history of "truth serum" in America during the 1920s and 1930s, identifying the intellectual ingredients of the idea of a physiological "truth technique," and examining why it seemed to meet an urgent need. It argues that truth serum had the patina of modern science but produced a phenomenon that could be understood and evaluated by every man. It therefore offered the public a technique with the benefits of expertise but without its attendant costs to lay authority. The paper also argues that truth serum helped develop an account of memory as a permanent record of experience, accessible through altered states of mind. This view contributed to the production of a public understanding of memory that both diverged from previous claims about memory and recall, and ran counter to the direction of current psychological research. It thus helped lay the groundwork for claims about memory permanence and scientific recall techniques later in the twentieth century.

Screening selves: sciences of memory and identity on film, 1930-1960.

Chemicals that could be used scientifically to force an individual to tell the truth - dubbed truth sera - were first described in the early 1920s. Ever since, the notion of "truth drugs" has remained tenaciously within popular culture. One of the most important reasons for the survival of the notion of a pharmaceutical technology of authenticity was the role of the barbiturates sodium amytal and sodium pentothal in psychiatric research and treatment during the 1930s through the 1950s. This article traces that history, giving special emphasis to the role of motion pictures. The article argues that researchers were seeking to develop a technology of authenticity (rather than of the truth per se). It examines how they used motion pictures to help them develop and disseminate this technology.

The intracarotid amobarbital procedure: an historical perspective.

The intracarotid sodium amobarbital procedure (IAP) is currently regarded as the best method of the determination of hemispheric specialization for speech, and it is universally relied on as a prognostic test for patients with medically refractory epilepsy who are candidates for neurosurgical intervention. Since its initial development, the IAP also has been adapted for assessing lateralized mesiotemporal contributions to memory functioning in this patient population, and it is now in wide use for both basic and applied research in behavioral neuroscience on language, memory, visuospatial functions, emotion, attention, and consciousness. Despite the IAP's wide range of applications, little has been said about its history and development. This essay recounts and discusses this history.