It's in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia All Documents and Media  
Home | Search | Narrative | Linus Pauling Day-By-Day

All Documents and Media

"Orthomolecular Medicine"
 
"Orthomolecular Medicine" June 3, 1978.
"Nutrition and Health: Myths and Realities, A Continuing Education Symposium," San Francisco, California.

The Birth of Orthomolecular Psychiatry. (2:06)

Download Audio File (Mp3) File to Your Computer

Transcript

Linus Pauling: I thought, this looked so important, this idea about changing the concentrations in the body of substances that are normally present in the human body, that the field deserves a name. Perhaps what I thought really was, "I'm writing a paper about this, what I've dug out of the literature, and what shall I call the paper?" So I decided to call it "orthomolecular psychiatry." "Orthomolecular" meaning the right molecules in the right amounts. And the whole field of orthomolecular medicine, I would say, is the achievement and preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present in the human body - many of them, in fact, required for life. Clearly very important and powerful substances. And others not necessarily required for life, but still important. Perhaps manufactured by the body itself.

As examples of orthomolecular medicine, recents ones, I might mention the control or treatment of tardive dyskinesia by having the patient take ten grams of choline, per day....it's only reasonable that choline would be involved here, in this neurological ailment caused by certain drugs, but because of its relation to acetylcholine.

Another example, Koutsias, who's dead now, wrote to me saying that he had read my paper, that he had tried treating Parkinson's disease by giving the patients L-dopa, without any effect. And after he read my paper he went back and tried one-hundred times as much L-dopa as he had tried before, and that was the beginning of the treatment of Parkinson's disease with L-dopa. It was effective in these large amounts.

Clip

Creator: Linus Pauling
Clip ID: 1978v.3-birth

Full Work

Creator: Linus Pauling

Date: June 3, 1978
Genre: sound
ID: 1978v.3
Copyright: More Information

Previous Audio Clip 
   A Rapidly Evolving Research Agenda.


Home | Search | Narrative | Linus Pauling Day-By-Day