At one point, eighteen of Janssen’s innovations were on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines. Janssen invented haloperidol—known commercially as Haldol—which calms the hallucinations of schizophrenics and allows them to be treated at home. The drug effectively ended the era of the insane asylum by convincing policymakers to release thousands of institutionalized mental patients who up to then could only be treated in a hospital.
