bromide

“How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration,” said Kovrin. “If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog. […]”

My adviser at college was a bromide who had not had an original thought in years.

We hoped the speech would include reassurances, but instead it was merely one bromide after another.