Word: miltown
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Greek word for body. Last week, in a Manhattan skyscraper, Dr. Frank Berger, research director of New Jersey's Wallace Laboratories, announced that his firm was beginning to market a new wonder drug-comparable, he hoped, in its effects on the body, to his earlier discovery, meprobamate (Miltown, Equanil), in its effects on the mind. The new tablet is a powerful muscle relaxant with some unusual painkilling qualities. Tried on more than 1,400 patients for almost two years, it has proved effective for many kinds of pain in the muscles and around joints-charley horse, tennis elbow, stiff...
Another story was Cavalleria, in a kind of performance that would have done well in a provincial Italian opera house. Dimitri Mitropoulos, when he was not drowning out the singers with his orchestra, conducted as if afflicted by an overdose of Miltown. Soprano Zinka Milanov found her still-beautiful voice crumbling around the edges. Allowances are customarily made for inept acting in prima donnas, but Diva Milanov plunged beyond the point of tolerance as she flung herself about the stage clutching her ample midriff. She provided a fine argument for bringing back Callas at all costs...
...saguaro, did the campaigner call it a day. Taking off from a scrub-lined strip without lights, he flew into Tucson, checked in at the Pioneer Hotel, took off his shirt, pants and shoes, ordered a brace of Old Crows (splashed with water, but no ice), swallowed a Miltown tablet and went to sleep like a winner...
...hulled sides made of parachute silk heaved in simulation of caterpillar motion (achieved with the aid of a huge air-blowing system). The monster, which stole the show among 285 commercially sponsored exhibits, was Surrealist Salvador Dali's unrealistic idea of tranquillity executed for Wallace Laboratories to promote Miltown. Estimated total cost of the exhibit: $100,000, including a $35,000 fee for Artist Dali...
Painter Dali called his creation Crisalida and explained in his notes: "The outer structure of Miltown is that of a chrysalis, maximum symbol of the vital nirvana which paves the way for the dazzling dawn of the butterfly, in its turn the symbol of the human soul." Any resemblance between Miltown and a chrysalis, doctors agreed, was confined to Dali's fancy. Still, the word chrysalis is derived from the Greek for gold, and no matter how untranquilizing Dali's work might be, as an attention-getter it was worth its weight in gold to Miltown...