Obliv[i]on C: Sedatives, Schedules, and the Stresses of ‘Modern Times’: South African Pharmaceutical Politics, 1930s to 1960s

Abstract

This article focuses on histories of one category of the many new synthetic drugs of the mid-twentieth century, which were variously termed hypnotics, sedatives and tranquillisers. I invoke Obliv(i)on as a metonym for pharmaceutical products now largely forgotten, for the general absence in our historiography of their significance, and for amnesia about the politics of pharmaceutical regulation in South Africa in the 1930s to 1960s. Along with antibiotics and hormones, by 1962, synthetic sedatives and tranquillisers were amongst the most frequently prescribed medical drugs in this country. As in many other countries they came to be amongst the fastest-selling, most desired, and on occasion, most dangerous new drugs of the post-war era. The article identifies a number of registers in which and moments when these sedatives became of pharmacological, professional or public interest, and sketches a chronology of their regulatory politics in South Africa in the mid-twentieth century. While South African markets remained limited, many local pharmacists, manufacturers, importers, and consumers were quick to embrace the therapeutic aspirations and chemical technologies of the time. In turn, they helped to accelerate multiple changes in a fulcrum period of the uneven emergence of ‘pharmaceutical modernity’ in South Africa.

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