Hannah Steinberg
Kindertransport refugee who researched how psychoactive drugs affect the mind
HANNAH STEINBERG, who has died aged 95, was one of the first Jewish children to arrive in Britain on the Kindertransport; she went on to become one of the first researchers to test systematically how psychoactive drugs affect the mind, helping to found the scientific field of psychopharmacology.
In the 1950s a range of exciting new “blockbuster” drugs had been developed, offering the first effective treatment for conditions such as insomnia and anxiety, though how they acted, the risks involved, and their addictive potential were poorly understood.
One of the most popular was Drinamyl (Dexamyl in the US), a powerful stimulant (amphetamine) and a heavy-duty sedative (barbiturate) rolled into one, which came in bluish triangular tablets popularly known as “purple hearts”. First marketed by Smith, Kline and French in 1950 as an anti-obesity drug as well as an antidepressant medication, Drinamyl was prescribed for a wide range of conditions.
Churchill was a fan, and Anthony Eden relied on Drinamyl to get him through the Suez crisis. The drug was not tightly controlled, and by the early 1960s had become a popular and widely abused party drug.
Hannah Steinberg, a psychologist in the pharmacology department of University College London, was one of the first to realise that the brain produces psychoactive substances in response to the ups and downs of life, and argued that the consequences of adding drugs to the mix could not be reliably predicted.
In the late 1950s, with her colleague Ruth Rushton, she set up experiments to test the effects of psychoactive drugs on the behaviour of laboratory animals as well as human guinea pigs, recording their responses at different doses.
Her research with rats and mice showed that Drinamyl produced effects that could not be safely predicted from the actions of its constituent “upper” and “downer” elements alone.
In theory the barbiturate should have quelled some of the jittery effects of the amphetamine, but to her surprise Hannah Steinberg found that it accentuated the effect of the amphetamine, making rats hyperactive. In other experiments, mice given a similar combination of drugs walked backwards.
She also found that the effect of Drinamyl could depend on the emotional state of the recipient, suggesting that the drug also reacted unpredictably with chemicals produced by the body. Rats stressed by changes in their environment responded differently from those that were not.
The 1963 paper in the British Journal of Pharmacology in which she and Ruth Rushton presented their findings contributed to the public debate which led to much tighter controls under the 1964 Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act.
Eventually Drinamyl was phased out, though Hannah Steinberg had no principled objection to the drug, telling a 1997 seminar on drugs in psychiatric medicine that she thought there was a great future in combining drugs, “provided that you know what you are doing”.
Hannah Steinberg was born in Vienna on March 16 1924, the only daughter of Michael Steinberg, a lawyer, and his wife Marie, who ran a wholesale pelt business.
In 1938 they arranged for their daughter to be evacuated to Britain on the Kindertransport. Shortly afterwards Marie Steinberg took her own life; her husband fled to Palestine.
In Britain, Hannah lived unhappily with relatives and then, more happily, with a foster family. After Putney High School she took a business course at the University of Reading and subsequently enrolled for a degree in French at University College London. She soon switched to Psychology, graduating with a First in 1948 then taking a PHD on the effects of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) on the performance of cognitive tasks.
She went on to become the first psychologist on the staff of the UCL pharmacology department and in 1970 became one of the first professors of psychopharmacology in the world. Her laboratory became a leading centre for the study of drug-taking behaviour and addiction.
In the 1980s, with her colleague and partner Elizabeth Sykes, she studied the effects of exercise on mental health, publishing a number of studies.
Hannah Steinberg was instrumental in the founding of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the British Association of Psychopharmacology.
Elizabeth Sykes died in 2011.
Hannah Steinberg, born March 16 1924, died December 11 2019