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The Journey of a Psychopharmacological Pioneer

From escaping Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to pharmaceutical breakthroughs to rubbing elbows with Aldous Huxley, Frank Berger has seen a lot in his life and career.

Published May 1, 2000

By Merle Spiegel
Academy Contributor

Image courtesy of Artinun via stock.adobe.com.

Anti-anxiety medications represent a significant share of the vast number of pharmaceuticals in widespread use today. In 1955, however, when Frank Berger invented meprobamate, it was the first and only anti-anxiety tranquilizer on the market. Berger, an Academy member for 51 years and a member of its Lyceum Society and Darwin Associates, was a true pioneer in the field of psychopharmacology.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Berger received his MD degree from the University of Prague and worked as a microbiologist at the National Institute of Health in Prague. The day after Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, he and his wife fled to England—with the assistance of the Quakers. After quickly learning to speak English, Berger first worked as a physician in a refugee camp. Two years later, he became a resident physician in an infectious diseases hospital and then a researcher in microbiology in the West Riding of Yorkshire Laboratories.

Berger looked back on his amazingly successful career in a recent interview.

How did you get started in pharmaceutical research?

I was looking for a preservative for penicillin and came up with a compound called mephenesin, which stabilized penicillin by killing contaminants in the air that broke it down. However, a more elegant preservative was discovered at the same time, making mephenesin unnecessary for this use. While studying the compound in animals, I had noticed that it produced remarkable relaxation of the voluntary muscles without affecting respiration, heartbeat, and other vital functions—and I realized that it might have applications in medicine. Mephenesin was first used to produce muscle relaxation along with anesthesia in surgery. It was effective but not practical—since it wasn’t very soluble, and large amounts had to be injected intravenously.

Did you try to develop a more soluble form?

No, at this point my work on mephenesin had become pretty well known, and I was offered a position at the University of Rochester Medical School in the U.S. I wanted to focus on producing relaxation in people with muscle spasms such as cerebral palsy and spastic paralysis. Soon, though, I realized that mephenesin was even more effective in reducing anxiety—which, in turn, reduced muscle tension. And it was clear to me that anxiety was one of the big unsolved problems in medicine at the time.

However, mephenesin had a short duration of action and didn’t remain effective for long. Nevertheless, Squibb decided to market mephenesin under the brand name Tolserol in 1948, and it became the company’s bestselling product that year.

Were you able to find a long-acting form of mephenesin?

I was recruited by Carter-Wallace to do just that. Carter-Wallace was a well-known manufacturer of over-the-counter products—Carter’s Little Liver Pills, for example— and wanted to expand into pharmaceuticals. I discovered a new compound called meprobamate, which was very effective in treating anxiety and was pretty long-acting as well. Meprobamate was patented in 1955 and marketed as Miltown by Carter-Wallace and as Equanil by Wyeth.

How successful was it?

Frank Berger at the podium addressing The New York Academy of Sciences’ 1956 conference on psychopharmacology. Novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley is to the left of Berger. Harry Beckman, professor of pharmacology and author of the best-selling Treatment in General Practice, is second from right, and renowned scientist Julian Huxley is at far right.

It became popular very quickly and soon was the most widely used prescription drug in the U.S. Meprobamate and other tranquilizing drugs were the subject of a major conference at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) in October 1956. In the keynote address, Aldous Huxley predicted that these drugs were capable of changing the quality of human consciousness—a development that he thought would be more revolutionary than achievements in nuclear physics.

What did you do next?

In addition to building Carter-Wallace’s pharmaceutical business, I spent the next few years developing a compound that could be used in place of aspirin and codeine for everyday treatment of muscle and back pain. The result, carisoprodol, provides pain relief to the skeletal muscles without affecting the mind. It was marketed as Soma by Carter-Wallace and as Rela by Schering .

Did you stay at Carter-Wallace until you retired?

No, I returned to academia as professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville, and served as a consultant to several pharmaceutical companies. This gave me a wonderful opportunity to spend part of each year in Geneva, Paris, London, and Milan. Even now, at the age of 87, I haven’t really retired. I still go to the office early each morning and keep up with what’s going on in my field.

What do you think is the most exciting development in pharmacology today?

Viagra. Just as meprobamate was the first drug to treat anxiety, Viagra is the first drug to treat sexual dysfunction. It’s a major breakthrough.

Also read:The Origin of the Term “Psychedelic”


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