years in Bizerte he became interested in the use of the antihistamine promethazine to make patients more relaxed before surgery and in contributing to anesthesia, observations that were the forerunner of his later interest in chlorpromazine. With Pierre Huguenard, Laborit invented the lytic cocktail, a combination of drugs that could be given to patients to reduce the shock and stress they experienced during and after surgery. Huguenard had success with a combination of promethazine and pethidine, at the time under the trade names Diparcol and Dolossal, and told Laborit of his finding. Laborit thought that putting patients into a state of artificial hibernation would prevent some aspects of stress reactions. These drugs made bodies stop their reactions to cooling. Laborit suggested to Rhône-Poulenc (a pharmaceutical company that became Sanofi) that they create antihistamines that optimized stabilization of the central nervous system. There, chemist Paul Charpentier headed a group trying to improve on the existing drug diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Dramamine, Sominex). So Charpentier created a new series of phenothiazines, one of them by adding a chlorine atom. Simone Courvoisier tested the series on laboratory rats and discovered that RP 4560 (chlorinated promazine, later known as chlorpromazine) could reverse the effects of epinephrine and could induce a state of apathy or indifference. Rhône-Poulenc marketed the drug in Europe for vomiting, pain, nausea, and convulsions as Largactil in 1952. Laborit is said to have named the drug, a blended word for "large activity". He, Huguenard and an associate named R. Alluaume published "A new vegetative stabilizer: 4560 RP." in La Presse Médicale in February 1952. According to Max Bennett, "the effect of the drug to produce 'disinterest' is mentioned together with the possibility that this property might make it of psychiatric use." Immediately following its synthesis at Rhône-Poulenc in December 1951, Laborit requested a sample of 4560 RP to test for the purpose of reducing shock in injured soldiers. His observation that people treated with this drug showed reduced interest in their surroundings led him to suggest the first test of antipsychotics by Hamon, Paraire and Velluz. A 24-year-old patient with mania was released from Val-de-Grâce and ready "to resume a normal life" after 20 days treatment with chlorpromazine and barbiturates. Although it had severe side effects, chlorpromazine "helped change the face of serious mental illness" and allowed many patients to live outside mental asylums; in the United States, the inpatient population of mental