Nathan Schellenberg Kline was an American #psychiatrist who is credited with founding the field o…

Nathan Schellenberg Kline was an American #psychiatrist who is credited with founding the field of #psychopharmacology.

In 1953, he began investigating the use of a new drug, #reserpine, to treat #schizophrenia. He continued to pioneer in the #biochemical #treatment of mentally ill patients by introducing the use of such drugs as the #antidepressants #lithium and #iproniazid and the #tranquilizer resperine.

Because these drugs so successfully drugs treated two of the major categories of psychiatric illness, thousands of patients - formerly considered untreatable - were able to leave institutions and to rejoin society.

By 1957, iproniazid, first in the class of #monoamineoxidase (MAO) inhibitors, was treating an estimated 400,000 people in the U.S.