transgenderer:

this is exclusively based on my vague cultural perception but it feels like in the 50s(?) pharmaceutical drugs and nuclear power were both seen as something with the potential to fix a huge array of problems with minimal cost and then in the following ~20 years the culture decided they werent actually solutions, and they were disillusioned, but from my perspective actually they were pretty much everything they were cracked up to be, and that disillusionment was bullshit. like, better living through modern chemistry and the marvel power of the atom are these weird unfulfilled dreams, but unfulfilled mostly for cultural rather than practical reasons

Like, the 1950s was the “psychopharmaceuticals that will fuck you up” era. Tranquilizers, sedatives, antipsychotics. Benzos. I guess that did set the stage for Prozac in the ‘80s. And diet pills that were amphetamine salts.

And like chemotherapy, and transplant-enabling immune suppressants and contraceptives were being researched for purposes of taking things out of or putting them into or keeping them out of the body, because the 1950s were the golden age of surgery.

The antibiotic boom was the ’40s.

What are you thinking of when you invoke 1950s pharmaceutical drugs?