Rita was the wife of a chemist at the Swiss drug company CIBA who concocted a new stimulant by modifying amphetamine, and Rita enjoyed tennis. The chemist shared his invention with his wife, and—to their delight—the substance had a wonderful effect on her tennis game. He named the new drug in honor of his darling. He named the new drug Ritaline.
In 1956, CIBA began marketing this drug as Ritalin in the United States, for a wide range of adult psychiatric maladies. But soon, evidence emerged that it might benefit what were then called “disturbed children.” In a landmark randomized clinical trial conducted in Baltimore by the child psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg and the child psychologist Keith Conners (then at Johns Hopkins) that was published in 1963, the drug improved behavioral symptoms, from “demanding” and “disobedient” to “leads into trouble” and “lying.” The diagnostic label “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD) did not yet exist, but the pair had put the drug on the child psychiatry map.
[For more of this story, written by Adam Gaffney, go to https://newrepublic.com/article/137066/adhd-sold]
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