Journal of Psychopharmacology

Allow me to congratulate whoever was responsible for devising the title of this meeting. The inspired inclusion of 'The Dawn' conjures up so many poetic images and metaphors. But the one which, to my mind, is the most appropriate in the context of what the meeting is all about, is that written by Thomas Fuller, a seventeenth-century cleric and man of letters and, incidentally, a graduate of this great university (Cambridge). In his 'PISGAN- sight of Palestine' he opined, 'It is always darkest just before the day dawneth'. These words have a particular relevance for me and for those embryo psychiatrists of my generation who, before the outbreak of the Second World War, groped their therapeutic way towards the light.

In the absence of a coherent understanding of the pathological basis of a disease, only serendipity can provide effective drugs for its treatment. Nowhere is this more evident than in an examination of the history of psychotherapeutic drugs (Sneader, 1985, pp. 175- 191 ).

Cultural and economic influences on the psychopharmacological era are reviewed, in an attempt to bring into focus what has been happening in psychopharmacology for the past thirty years. It is argued that the belief that clinical advances are made through the heroic achievements of disinterested scientists is a simplistic view that may militate against future significant discoveries. Such discoveries, it is argued, still come about for the most part serendipitously, despite a widespread belief that psychopharmacology has become a rational science.