Tranquillisers are drugs that are prescribed by a doctor to reduce anxiety, fear, tension and other forms of mental disturbance. An Australian psychiatrist, Dr John Cade, was the first to use a tranquilliser to calm a mentally ill patient. Tranquillisers were first developed in the early 1950s, not as a cure but to relieve symptoms associated with other problems.
They help to calm agitated, excited and irrational patients and enable many seriously ill people, who would otherwise be hospitalized, to live at home, and engage in productive work.
Tranquillisers are also found to be useful during surgery to reduce the amount of anaesthetic needed. Before the advent of tranquillisers, the treatment of mental illness was often cruel and drastic and some of the procedures left patients unfit to lead a normal life. To this end, tranquillisers are indeed wonder drugs.
Picture Credit : Google
