Word: serpentina
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Snakeroot. The new drugs are as important, in their way, as the germ-killing sulfas discovered in the 1930s. Two drugs ushered in the new era: chlorpromazine* (TIME, June 14), a synthetic compound, and reserpine †(TIME, June 21), a pure alkaloid from the juices of the snakeroot (Rauwolfia serpentina), crude extracts of which had been used for centuries by medicine men in India. Both drugs became available in the U.S. in 1953. But most ivory-tower mental hospitals, attached to medical schools with good research facilities, passed up the chance to be first to try the drugs. Far more...
...Janeiro, Physiologist João de Souza Campos, Biochemist Roched Seba and Botanist Geraldo Kulman reported the discovery of a native substitute for India's so-called "miracle plant," rauwolfia serpentina, which has proved highly effective (in drug form) in treating high blood pressure and nervous disorders (TIME, Nov. 8). Drugs made from the new plant, rauwolfia sellowi, act on the nervous system like their Indian counterparts, but with a lower toxic effect...
...Derived from the root of the snakeroot shrub, Rauwolfia serpentina, crude extracts of which have been used for 3,000 years by India's medicine men. The late Mohandas Gandhi took such an extract as a tranquilizer...