"Albert Hofmann labeled the chemical LSD-25, because it had been the 25th variation in his experiments. His employer, Sandoz laboratories (now a subsidiary of Novartis), began providing the substance to researchers in hopes of finding profitable applications. By the mid-1950s, the C.I.A., the U.S. Army, the Canadian government, and Britain’s M.I.6 had all jumped in, hoping LSD would serve as a truth serum or a new method of chemical warfare. Prisons and the military provided fertile and secret testing grounds. Other practitioners, varying widely in their legitimacy, experimented on derelicts, terminal cancer patients, residents of veterans’ hospitals, and college students. Within the psychiatric profession word spread that LSD held the potential to cure alcoholism, schizophrenia, shell shock (now known as post-traumatic stress disorder), and a wide range of other problems. Between 1950 and 1965, a reported 40,000 people worldwide would be tested or “treated” with LSD".
Vanity Fair Magazine