ABSTRACT
Most histories of psychiatry attribute the emptying of mental hospitals in the United States and other western countries to the development of chlorpromazine and other antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s, and view this as a watershed moment in society's care of the mentally ill. In his (1997) book A History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter neatly summarized this belief: `Chlorpromazine initiated a revolution in psychiatry, comparable to the introduction of penicillin in general medicine.' With this drug, he said, schizophrenia patients `could lead relatively normal lives and not be con®ned to institutions' (Shorter, 1997). This is a comforting story of progress, and it enables the United States and other western countries to believe that, however ¯awed modern care may be, it is light years better than what came before.
