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Swazey, J. P CHLORPROMAZINE IN PSYCHIATRY, A STUDY OF THERAPEUTIC INNOVATION Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT. Press, 1974, 340 pp., $17.50
"The primary object of this study has been to trace the processes of scientific research and therapeutic innovation that led to the development of CPZ [chlorpromazine} and its entrance into psychiatry." This historical excursion is part of a wider scheme, the Traces (Technology in Retrospect And Critical Events in Science) project undertaken by the National Science Foundation in 1967. In this context, the National Research Council and the NIMH selected chlorpromazine as a major scientific advance to be studied in terms of its historical antecedents, with the purpose of clarifying the process of science and technology above and beyond their content.
The author, a medical historian, undertook a very difficult task: gathering a vast amount of information, organizing many seemingly different and unrelated lines of scientific progress, while emphasizing the process besides the content. The result could have been an erudite book, interesting to a few insiders and boring for the others, or an anecdotal...