Biochemistry and Schizophrenia

Abstract

It is presumptuous for a clinician to embark on this subject, and I hasten to apologize for my boldness in doing so. My excuses are many. The first comes from clinical experience. Since my student days, when I observed malignant schizophrenia in a young girl for the first time, and watched its relentless progress despite all therapeutic efforts, I came to the belief that this was an illness of body as well as of mind, and this belief has led me to maintain a continuing interest in the medical, as distinct from the purely psychological, investigations of this disease throughout my professional years. Next has been the observation of experimental or model psychoses produced by drugs. An LSD or mescaline psychosis is not schizophrenia, any more than curare poisoning is myasthenia gravis, but there is enough similarity between the dissociation states produced by psychotomimetic drugs and the real thing to stimulate one's curiosity, at least.