Medicine: Brave New Soma

The ancient Aryan invaders of India found that from the fermented juice of a vine (probably Asdepias acida) they could get a drink that made them feel happy, courageous and of superhuman strength. They called it “soma.” It was so potent that it gained the status of a deity (the Rigveda is repetitive with praises of the divine potion). That was about 3,500 years ago.

When Aldous Huxley saw a Brave New World in his crystal ball (1932), he borrowed the name soma for his panacea: “There is always soma, delicious soma, half a gram for a half-holiday, a gram for a weekend, two grams for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon.” That was 600 years hence, in the 7th century After Ford.

Soma is also the Greek word for body. Last week, in a Manhattan skyscraper, Dr. Frank Berger, research director of New Jersey’s Wallace Laboratories, announced that his firm was beginning to market a new wonder drug—comparable, he hoped, in its effects on the body, to his earlier discovery, meprobamate (Miltown, Equanil), in its effects on the mind. The new tablet is a powerful muscle relaxant with some unusual painkilling qualities. Tried on more than 1,400 patients for almost two years, it has proved effective for many kinds of pain in the muscles and around joints—charley horse, tennis elbow, stiff neck, torticollis (“wryneck”), whiplash injury, muscular rheumatism, and muscle pain resulting from slipped disks. It also helps some (but by no means all) cases of cerebral palsy and Parkinsonism.

Even chemists had to give the drug a less jawbreaking name than N-isopropyl-2-methyl-2-propyl-1 ,3-propanediol dicarbamate, hit upon “carisoprodol.” That was still too much for Wallace Labs’ savvy marketing department: they are calling it Soma.