Hallucinogens as hard science: the adrenochrome hypothesis for the biogenesis of schizophrenia.

Working in a psychiatrically innovative environment created by the Government of Saskatchewan, Canada, Abram Hoffer and Humphry F. Osmond enunciated the adrenochrome hypothesis for the biogenesis of schizophrenia in 1952, slightly later proposing and, apparently, demonstrating, in a double-blind study, that the symptoms of the illness could be reversed by administering large doses of niacin. After placing the hypothesis within its ideological framework, the author describes its emergence and elaboration and discusses the empirical evidence brought against it. Hoffer's idiosyncratic diagnostic procedures, especially his creation and use of a supposed biochemical marker for schizophrenia, are examined. The author argues that Hoffer's conceptualization of schizophrenia, as well as his treatment approach, depended on a tautology. Following David Healy, the author treats the adrenochrome hypothesis as a version of a transmethylation theory, thus incorporating it into mainstream psychopharmacology.

Lessons from the periphery: psychiatry in Saskatchewan, Canada, 1944-68.

The government of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, when elected in 1944, established programmes for the state-funded care of all those suffering from mental illness. It enacted legislation covering the care and treatment of the mentally ill and created a division of the Department of Public Health, the Psychiatric Services Branch (PSB), which both recruited and trained psychiatric staff, meeting the need for nonmedical staff by creating a programme for the training of psychiatric nurses in Saskatchewan. The PSB devised the Saskatchewan Plan for the delivery of rural services, centred on small mental hospitals of a revolutionary design. Even though never fully instantiated, the Plan commanded worldwide attention. Saskatchewan was also remarkable for its research programmes, covering almost all aspects of psychiatry.