30 Facts About Henri Laborit

Henri Laborit 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.

Henri 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.

Henri Laborit wrote several books where he popularizes his ethological laboratory research and marries it, through systems thinking, with knowledge from several other disciplines, being a strong advocate of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.

Henri Laborit was personally untroubled by the requirements of science and the constraints of university life.

Henri Laborit 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.

Henri Laborit's father was a physician and colonial officer who died in 1920 from tetanus.

Henri Laborit spent two years in Indochina on a hospital ship.

Henri Laborit passed the examinations at the Naval Health Service in Bordeaux, and became a navy physician.

Henri Laborit was saved by an English sloop that picked him up.

Henri Laborit was the first to recognize the potential psychiatric uses of chlorpromazine.

Surgeons were sometimes responsible for anesthetics and as a French navy surgeon, Henri Laborit had seen patients die as a result of or after their operations.

Henri Laborit advocated the use of procaine, synthetic antihistamines, Diparcol, tetraethylammonium bromide and vitamin B1.

Henri Laborit thought that putting patients into a state of artificial hibernation would prevent some aspects of stress reactions.

Henri Laborit suggested to Rhone-Poulenc that they create antihistamines that optimized stabilization of the central nervous system.

Henri Laborit is said to have named the drug, a blended word for "large activity".

Immediately following its synthesis at Rhone-Poulenc in December 1951, Henri Laborit requested a sample of 4560 RP to test for the purpose of reducing shock in injured soldiers.

Henri Laborit shared the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 1957 with Pierre Deniker and Heinz Lehmann for contributions towards the general use of chlorpromazine.

Henri Laborit found himself at odds with Sainte-Anne hospital's staff for the rest of his life.

Henri Laborit became director of the Laboratoire d'Eutonologie at Boucicault Hospital in Paris.

Alexander Zaytsev synthesized GHB in 1874, and Henri Laborit synthesized the drug in 1960.

Henri Laborit was researching GHB as a precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA.

Henri Laborit published "Sodium 4-hydroxybutyrate" in the International Journal of Neuropharmacology in September 1964.

Henri Laborit was elected a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1953.

Henri Laborit received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award which he shared in 1957, after traveling to the United States on behalf of Rhone-Poulenc.

Henri Laborit's ideas are the substance of the Alain Resnais 1980 film Mon oncle d'Amerique in which he plays himself.

Henri Laborit interviewed Salvador Dali about one of his books which Dali had read but did not understand.

Healy wrote that Henri Laborit felt cheated of his recognition and that he died a bitter man.

Henri Laborit was one of the pioneers of complexity theory and self-organization in France and the initiator of "complex thought" in his meetings with the "Groupe des Dix".