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Enthusiasm, suggestion, alteration of accustomed routine, and other factors have caused overoptimistic reports on new drugs. The authors selected twenty-two patients from a male ward for a test of thorazine, carefully controlled to eliminate these factors. Of the eleven given thorazine, nine showed some improvement, moderate or marked in eight. The two who failed to improve were a forty-eight-year-old paretic, psychotic for eighteen years, and an eighteen-year-old catatonic who had been ill and hospitalized for one year. The patient with only slight improvement had been ill for twenty-five years and had undergone lobotomy. The average duration of illness in the improved cases was eighteen and a half years (range, five to twenty-eight years). Of the eleven controls receiving placebos identical in appearance with the thorazine, seven showed no change or became worse. Four showed improvement, but of these two were paranoid schizophrenics who had been ill less than a year, and a third was a mixed manic with alternations of mood for forty-three years.
The authors conclude that thorazine is useful in converting acutely disturbed psychotics into tractable, accessible patients better able to participate in the hospital program of rehabilitation. Brief accounts of all twenty-two cases are included.