Why Weren't Drugs Used to Treat Mental Illness?

Andrew Scull says hardly anybody had conceived of using drugs to treat mental illness. In mental hospitals back in the 19th and 20th centuries, drugs were usually used to control patients and to calm them down.

Opiates and various hypnotics put people to sleep when they were extremely agitated. Marijuana was sometimes experimented with, as was alcohol in the 19th century, interesting given the revival of psychedelics. The idea that a drug would actually attack the underlying problem emerged by accident.

The drug industry had emerged mostly in Germany, where the most advanced medicine was being practiced in the late 19th century, from the chemical industry and from refining coal tar into different substances. Aspirin came from that coal-tar refining, along with a whole bunch of other drugs. Drug companies gradually became more organized and differentiated themselves from the quack remedies around them.