I can't read in the car without wanting to throw up

Two pages into my book and the whole back seat starts to tilt. — Boy on a long drive, 1958

A woman went to the Johns Hopkins allergy clinic in Baltimore about her hives, and the doctors gave her an experimental antihistamine. The hives cleared. So did the nausea she got on the streetcar. Allergists Leslie Gay and Paul Carliner took the hint. Smart. They tried the drug on soldiers crossing the Atlantic on a troop ship that rolled in rough water. They announced in 1949 that it worked. The pill is still sold, taken ahead of the trip, and it can make you sleepy, which doesn't help if you wanted to read. Nobody had been looking for it.

For now: sit in the front seat, look at something far down the road, and save the book for when you get there.

The full file

The troop ship trial was no small thing. In November 1948, with the Army's approval, more than 1,300 soldiers sailed from New York to Germany on the General C. C. Ballou, a 10-day voyage. Some got the drug before sailing, some after they got sick, and some got a sugar pill. The Hopkins account says all but one of the seasick men who took it afterward recovered. A 1999 American Heritage look back puts it at better than 90 percent within half an hour. Not bad for a pill nobody ordered.

Timing matters. The Mayo Clinic says the medicine has to be in you well before the trip, and the CDC says it works best before the motion starts, not after. Once you're sick, the stomach may not absorb it.

The drug reached drugstores later in 1949. The hives were the only thing anyone had been treating.