EFFECT OF "MALONONITRILE" ON PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATUS OF SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS

Abstract

IN 1948 Hydén and Hartelius,¹of the Caroline Institute, Stockholm, published a monograph covering the extensive work they had done on the effect of the drug "malononitrile" in increasing the protein metabolism and cellular function of the ganglion cells of the central nervous system. They were able to demonstrate by the microspectrographic technic of Caspersson²that the brain tissue taken at frontal lobotomy in 11 schizophrenic patients and in 1 patient with an endogenous depression differed from the tissue taken post mortem on 4 reputedly "normal" persons who had died suddenly not more than three to five hours before the specimen was taken. The threefold differences which they described between the material from the psychotic patients and that taken from normal brains consisted in the observations that in the large pyramidal cells of the third layer of the frontal cortex (1) the nucleolar and nuclear apparatus were poorly