April 9, 1968

Dr. Peter J. Pauling

Chemistry Department

University College London

Gower Street WC 1

London, England

Dear Peter:

I am terribly sorry not to have got a letter off to you earlier, in answer to yours of nearly a month ago. Mow mama and I are going to Amherst for two weeks, and I am dictating a letter, which my secretary will mail to you after signing it for me.

I have had some trouble in deciding what to say in answer to your question. I have decided that I do not understand the details of the matter well enough to be sure, but I think that you would be justified in writing a rather brief discussion of the matter of acetylcholine at the present time. One takes a chance in doing this—the chance that the statements would turn out later on to be wrong, but I think that it might well be worthwhile to take this chance.

We are still carrying on the experiments on vitamin C on schizophrenics. We agree with the earlier reports that there is something abnormal about vitamin C metabolism in schizophrenics, but we have not yet made any studies on chronic schizophrenics, and I do not yet know whether the very great abnormality reported by Vandercamp will turn out to be present in California chronic schizophrenics. I hope within a couple of months to have arrange-ments made with a couple of mental hospitals here for access to chronic schizophrenics.

Mama and I are getting along pretty well. I gave a lecture at Riverside (one of the University of California Centennial Charter Celebration Lectures) two days ago, and we saw not only Crellin and Lucy but also Barclay and Linda, who came over for a party that evening.

Much love from,

Daddy

LP:jj

P.S. I have read proof and have ordered reprints for the cobaltidyanide paper, with half of the reprints to be mailed directly to you. I judge that it is scheduled for the April issue. My schizophrenia paper is to appear in Science for 18 April. I have a little paper on Superconductivity coming out in the Proceedings in May.