16. On Iodine and Chlorpromazine 



The list of drugs, the action of which is not understood, is a 

 long one. So when attempting to correlate pharmacological activity 

 with E* we can hardly do more than to pick one or tT\'o examples 

 and see whether £* leads us to a better understanding. I will pick 

 "something old and something new": KI and chlorpromazine. 



KI 



When I was a medical student, iodine in the form of KI was 

 fhe universal medicine. Nobody knew what it did, but it did some- 

 thing and did something good. We students used to sum up the 

 situation in this little rhyme: 



"Wenn Du nicht weisst wo, was, warum, 

 Gebe dann lodkalium." 



Freely translated: 



If ye don't know where, what, and why 

 Prescribe ye then K and I. 



Our medical predecessors, possessing very few and crude instru- 

 ments only, had to make use of two given by nature (the use of 

 which has since gone out of fashion) : eyes and brains. They were 

 keen observers and the universal application of iodide might have 

 been not without foundation. 



Since the iodide has no specific solubilities or affinities, we can 

 expect it to act on £* /« vitro at the concentration which it reaches 

 in the body when applied in therapeutic doses, provided that it 

 owes its activity to an action on £*. The single medical dose of 

 KI is 1 gram, which in an adult of 60 kg makes an over-all con- 



112 



