Around the time when Grünenthal knew full well that Thalidomide was causing massive nerve damage, Arthur Tachezy, the head of Grünenthal’s Hamburg sales office, made a sales visit to a hospital which included a psychiatric wing. He went to the general hospital and found extensive Thalidomide nerve damage. He then went to the psychiatric wing where he found no reports of nerve damage.

He reported back to headquarters in Stolberg, mocking the idea that the people in the psychiatric wing weren’t noticing the effects because “perhaps the idiots love it when it tingles”.

Sources: Note by Arthur Tachezy from April 21, 1961.

Michael Magazanik: Silent Shock. The men behind the Thalidomide scandal and an Australian family’s long road to justice. Melbourne 2015, pp. 71ff.