Compoz : That Gentle Blue Pill

 After many yrs in pursuit of my history/archeology , which has meant everything from digging in a burned out basement in Troy NY to digging into old farmers landfills long forgotten. It also means finding interesting items along the way a garage sale or even helping a relative clean out their home as she thins out  items of her life. Such is the case with several pocket medicines I discovered while  "helping out". Pocket tins of medicine were common 35 plus yrs ago. Usually aspirin or a product called Anacin for headache or muscular pain. There were about 20 of them , filled with buttons she kept for sewing. A couple pocket tins were of a popular product in the 50's and 60's. It was called Compoz. I looked briefly at the ingredients. This pharmacological compound had interesting sounding names attached to it. Extract of Passion Flower and Valarian root. It was essentially an OTC tranquilizer. You can google an old compoz commercial from the early 60's. It talks about a mother becoming a raging stranger to her children or a man who's career is in trouble because of"simple nervous tension."  Back then they referred to it as "that gentle blue pill."  The radio commercial had harp music playing in it which I suppose sounded soothing. It was also billed as a mild sedative for relief of simple nervous tension. Back then it appears the term sedative and tranquilizer were used as the same thing. Back then we also had  and still do sleep aids that use Diphenhydramine , which is a first generation antihistamine that has among other qualities the ability to make one feel tired.  Nytol was one of the most popular back then in the 50's 60's. As best as I can research some of the ingredients of compoz was that they had mild sedative affects with mild muscular relaxation properties. By the way extract of passion flower as an example can still be purchased in health food stores. When this formulation was finally taken off the market circa 1970's most of those sort of herbal medicines were taken up by health type of  stores in this country and Europe.
 So what does this little find suggest. Well , it once again shows that societies have for thousands of yrs self medicated. Whether through the cultivation of hops for beer of grapes for the fermentation of wine to the discovery of poppy plants we have searched for something to make an attitude adjustment or relax or kill pain. Ancient Greek doctors had women during the child birth process suck on willow branch. We derived aspirin from willow bark. Patient medicines were sold widely into the early 20th century , some had morphine or cocaine in them. It also suggests that the good old days may not have been so "good" for as many as some think. The 20th Century was filled with war , economic depression , the move from a more rural to urban / suburban world. The need for higher amounts of education increased  as the century moved on. Social pressures did mount for those of all  socio-economic groups. From my interview with a retired Albany College of Pharmacy graduate Compoz was a big seller. According to him especially among females. He suspected women often bought them for their husbands as well. What began to lessen the sales of this and similar OTC preparations was what the research drug companies began to pour their research dollars into. In reality  as the fifties and sixties rolled on psycho pharmacology began to pay big dividends for the Drug Companies. According to my interview the drug that really set the pace was Diazepam known better as Valium. Marketed in it's initial sales as more of a mild muscle relaxer it began to be seen as a major boost for a relaxed state. It became I believe the most  widely used prescription of the 60's into the 70's in USA and Europe. These sales started a research revolution  which has led to a revolution in the treatment of various psychological disorders and  difficulties. Prozac and other drugs for ADHD being one of the most famous and perhaps overused. drugs in the last 20 yrs. So Compoz has given way to other prescription medications unless one goes on line or visits a "health food store". But it's popularity was a sign post of what the 60' s and the next 50 yrs would  be searching out. A continuation  of thousands of yrs for that gentle blue revolution. My thanks to Paul Reinhardt for additional information on that era.

Plimpton : The Movie

 I wanted to take a few minutes out from a somewhat busy time with a few projects I am juggling to speak of a new Biographical movie I saw this week in Manhattan. It open on May 22nd and will open on Los Angles on June 7th. The movie Plimpton starring George Plimpton  is a movie exploring the life of I must confess one of my hero's. He was an editor of Paris Review which was the sort of the literary magazine that introduced  such authors as Philip Roth , Terry Southern  and many others to the post war literary arena.. He was of the Ivy League , he could trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower. He spoke  with a rather upper crust , upper Manhattan accent one does not really hear anymore. So , why did I a country / suburban kid from Upstate New York have him along with Phil Hill the race car driver  as my early hero's. Well......I guess it is because of what else he did. and inspired a much younger me. He referred  of himself as a participatory journalist. He would actually do what others did so as to have a then unique perspective on a topic , often sports. He was a reality show before that term was coined. He boxed Archie Moore , pitched against Willie Mays , was a Lion Tamer and perhaps most famously was last string quarterback for preseason  Detroit Lions. He wrote one of his books Paper Lyon based on that experience. It was later made into a movie starring Alan Alda. I well remember coming out of a movie house in Saratoga NY thinking what an interesting perspective he had. The next year in my senior high school year as I began to {reform} my thinking it was kind of like he traveled along as well. on that journey. The reality that my life might be rather pedestrian rather than 007 exciting hung over me as it begins to with all most all adolescence young people. My mildly depressed outlook on the then world  was eased quite a bit when I was struck one day that if Plimpton could do interesting stuff while being an editor of what I then thought of as a stuffy journal maybe along life's way maybe I could be a Walter Mitty in a reality world as well.  So along life's way I have explored a number of topics and areas. They range from archeology , history , rebuilding a VW air cooled engine with a master mechanic that let me work with him , taking a faith healing course with The Episcopal Church. No I don't really do that. Once I volunteered at a Pirate radio station run by RPI guys off an old tug boat located near Troy on the Hudson River. They helped me build a special antenna that I used with a souped up radio to pick up electromagnetic signals  from Jupiter deep into the morning. Yes you can really do that. I have been given by my patient wife a gift of three laps around a track in Connecticut in a  vintage Jaguar. I have  helped form a battle line at Saratoga to recreate the Revolutionary War battle there.  Hot day , hot uniform. I may only do these things once and have done other things on other  occasions ,  even write about some of them. But this spice to my sometimes mundane life has upon times come with a price , trust me I rocked climbed only once and never will again.I guess this tribute has been to  make a few more people aware of George Plimpton who died from a heart attack in 2003. Intellect , explorer , writer , sometime actor and occasional inspiration. Faking it can be interesting , try it sometime.