Henri Laborit

Henri Laborit 21 November 1914 18 May 1995 was a French surgeon neurobiologist writer and philosopher In 1952 Laborit was instrumental in the development of the drug chlorpromazine published his findings and convinced three psychiatrists to test it on a patient resulting in great success Laborit was recognized for his work but as a surgeon searching for an anesthetic he came to be at odds with psychiatrists who made their own discoveries and competing claims Laborit wrote several books where he vulgarizes his ethological laboratory research and marries it through systems thinking with knowledge from several other disciplines being a strong advocate of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity His writings can also be found to have deep roots in anarchist thought He was personally untroubled by the requirements of science and the constraints of university life He maintained an independence from academia and never sought to produce the orderly results that science requires of its adherents Henri Laborit was born in Hanoi French Indochina in 1914 His father was a physician and colonial officer who died in 1920 from tetanus Laborit contracted tuberculosis at age 12 In Paris he earned a baccalaureate He spent two years in Indochina on a hospital ship He passed the examinations at the Naval Health Service in Bordeaux and became a navy physician He was sent to Sidi Abdallah Bizerte Feeling that his options for recognition would be better he switched to become a surgeon During World War II he was stationed on the torpedo boat Sirocco where he witnessed the evacuation of the Dunkerque and then was sunk by the Germans He was saved by an English sloop that picked him up He received the French Military Cross with distinction He was later stationed in Dakar By about 1949 he was appointed to ValdeGrâce hospital in Paris Laborit was the first to recognize the potential psychiatric uses of chlorpromazine The science of anesthesiology was new since the 1930s Surgeons were sometimes responsible for anesthetics and as a French navy surgeon Laborit had seen patients die as a result of or after their operations He became a researcher in anesthesiology Laborits ideas on anesthesia included potentiated anaesthesia lowering basal metabolism and lowering body temperature socalled artificial hibernation He advocated the use of procaine synthetic antihistamines Diparcol diethazine tetraethylammonium bromide and vitamin B1 He did not like to use morphine In his years in Bizerte he became interested in the use of the antihistamine promethazine to make patients more relaxed before surgery and in contributing to anesthesia observations that were the forerunner of his later interest in chlorpromazine Source Article Henri Laborit from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30