QUOTE : In the early twentieth century, for instance, opiates were widely used for all sorts of ills, even sold in syrup to calm colicky babies. Lithium baths prospered—vats of cool bubbling water said to soothe the troubled soul. Extract of conium, either on its own or coupled with iron, quinine, or Fowler’s solution, was used to treat depression, as was the plant extract nux vomica. Hyoscyamus, from the passionflower, was used to diminish sleeplessness or extreme excitement. There were tinctures of veratrine and belladonna and stimulants such as ammonia, lytta, and all kinds of aromatics in small amber jars you held just below the nostrils, sniffing in comforting drafts of lavender, rosemary, or cinnamon. So prevalent were and are attempts at biological cures, and so available for such a great span of time, that nonphysical therapies, such as psychoanalysis and other “talking cures,” are in fact the real oddity, a brief blip in what has otherwise been a mostly somatic approach to the treatment of human suffering in all its manifestations.