Making the First Anti-Depressant: Amphetamine in American Medicine, 1929-1950

@article{Rasmussen2006MakingTF,
  title={Making the First Anti-Depressant: Amphetamine in American Medicine, 1929-1950},
  author={Nicolas Rasmussen},
  journal={Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences},
  year={2006},
  volume={61},
  pages={288 - 323}
}
  • N. Rasmussen
  • Published 19 June 2006
  • Medicine
  • Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
E are accustomed to thinking of the widespread use of anti-depressant drugs as a recent phenomenon, and one of decidedly mixed blessings. While no doubt effective, their phenomenal popularity since the 1990s has raised questions about the medicalization of problems of living and the fading boundaries between healing and medical enhancement (or the specter of “cosmetic pharmacology,” in Peter Kramer’s pithy formulation). Today’s anti-depressants have also, for some critics, come to symbolize the… 
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