Word: pills
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What seemed, when first tested a few years ago, to be the ideal sleeping pill has turned into a frightening medical nightmare. The drug is thalidomide; it has been widely used in Western Europe (except France) under the names Contergan and Softenon, in Britain as Distaval, and in Brazil and Japan. In Canada, and (under heavy restrictions) in the U.S., it is distributed as Kevadon. Not a barbiturate, thalidomide quickly induces sleep and seldom leaves a hangover. It appears virtually impossible to commit suicide with it; 188 people are known to have tried and failed. But on a statistical basis...
...there are some great lines en route to the denouement. A doctor asks Groucho, as the converted veterinarian is about to give a patient a suspiciously horse-sized capsule, "Isn't that a bit large for a pill?" Groucho answers, "Well, it was too small for a basketball, and I didn't know what else to do with it." A nurse asks Groucho to okay a document, and he responds, "I'm much too busy--I'll put the O on now, but you'll have to come back later...
...scorer, should see considerable action. Wilson keeps Kelley on the bench during the opening tip-off in order to have him available to inject new life into the squad when the offense begins to sag. Thus far Kelly has been quite effective in his role as a pep-up pill...
Sugar-Coated Pill. Vercors counterpoises Sylva's struggle upward with the sordid decline of Richwick's sometime girl friend into a drug-addicted, sexually perverted mindlessness. After a dash of degradation with her in London, Richwick escapes to come back home as a love-smitten Pygmalion to his Galatea-who turns out to be pregnant...
Will he marry her? Is the unborn offspring his? Will it even be human? The answers supply some neat fillips at book's end, but they are only part of the literary sugar-coating on Vercors' pill. For pill it is, Vercors is not so much a novelist as a moralist, and Sylva is not so much a novel as a fable-an edifying tale designed to explore the question that has been bothering 59-year-old Jean Brüller ever since he took the pen name Vercors and wrote the book that made his reputation...