Biochemical Studies in Schizophrenia

Abstract

The concept of a chemical etiology in schizophrenia is not new. The Hippocratic school attributed certain mental aberrations to changes in the composition of the blood, but it was Thudichum, the founder of modern neuro-chemistry, who in 1884 expressed the concept most cogently: “Many forms of insanity are unquestionably the external manifestations of the effects upon the brain substance of poisons fermented within the body, just as mental aberrations accompanying chronic alcoholic intoxication are the accumulated effects of a relatively simple poison fermented out of the body. These poisons we shall, I have no doubt, be able to isolate after we know the normal chemistry to its uttermost detail. And then will come, in their turn, the crowning discoveries to which our efforts must ultimately be directed, namely, the discoveries of the antidotes to the poisons and to the fermenting causes and processes which produce them” In these few words were anticipated and encompassed most of the current chemical formulations regarding schizophrenia.