ABSTRACT

The advent of antipsychotic drugs occurred via a process that is both colorful and serendipitous. Ironically, war was the force that initially propelled the development of this group of drugs that has helped bring peace to so many patients with schizophrenia. The phenothiazines and their derivatives, including methylene blue, were well known to 19th-century industrial chemists, but largely as dyes. Then, when methylene blue was discovered to possess antimalarial properties, numerous additional derivatives of methylene blue were synthesized by the Germans in World War I and by the Allies in World War II for this purpose. At the time, quinine, a derivative of a tropical tree bark, was the only treatment for malaria, and access to the trees that produced quinine was very tenuous. Thus, the development of a synthetic antimalarial became strategically essential for modern armies who conducted global campaigns.