institutions dropped from 559,000 in 1955 to 452,000 ten years later." Lasker award Laborit shared the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 1957 with Pierre Deniker and Heinz Lehmann for contributions towards the general use of chlorpromazine. No one won a Nobel Prize for the discovery, and Jean Delay of the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center, who wanted to win himself, sat on the Nobel committee but was opposed to giving it to Laborit. Laborit found himself at odds with Sainte-Anne hospital's staff for the rest of his life. In 1957, the Lasker Foundation also recognized Nathan S. Kline and Robert H. Noce, both of whom advanced reserpine as a treatment for mental illness, as well as Rustom Jal Vakil for treating hypertension with reserpine, and, unrelated, Richard E. Shope for pioneering our understanding of viruses. Career Laborit became director of the Laboratoire d'Eutonologie at Boucicault Hospital in Paris. His interests included psychotropic drugs and memory. Alexander Zaytsev synthesized GHB in 1874, and Laborit synthesized the drug in 1960. He was researching GHB as a precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA. Laborit published "Sodium 4-hydroxybutyrate" in the International Journal of Neuropharmacology in September 1964. Awards and cultural references Laborit received the Croix de Guerre with distinction. He was elected a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1953. He received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award which he shared in 1957, after traveling to the United States on behalf of Rhône-Poulenc. Laborit's ideas are the substance of the Alain Resnais 1980 film Mon oncle d'Amérique in which he plays himself. Laborit interviewed Salvador Dalí about one of his books which Dalí had read but did not understand. Death and legacy Healy wrote that Laborit felt cheated of his recognition and that he died a bitter man. Healy noted a few attempts to set the record straight: a 1980 book by Jean Thuillier that credits Delay and Deniker and Laborit, a 1960s book by Ann Caldwell that sided with Laborit, and a 1974 book by Judith Swazey, Chlorpromazine in Psychiatry, which gave credit to both sides. A 1992 commemoration by Rhône-Poulenc gave Laborit credit for anesthesia but gave Deniker and Delay credit for application of chlorpromazine to psychiatry. In 1994, on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Val-de-Grâce, a plaque was placed there commemorating the discovery of chlorpromazine by Laborit, Harmon, Paraire, and Velluz in 1952. Laborit was one of the pioneers