September 6, 1966
Dr. Linus Pauling, Jr.
3909 Round Top Drive
Honolulu, Hawaii
Dear Linus:
Mamma and I are looking forward to seeing you - if not before then, in January or February, we hope.
We are scheduled to go to India in January, arriving in Madras on 8 January, I believe. There is the possibility that we would go a couple of days earlier, to see some friends in Calcutta on the way to Madras. At any rate, we could stop in Honolulu on the way, in January, or on the way back, about 15 February.
Are you going to be at home at either or both of these times?
Mamma has talked with Linda about the cruise on the Mediterranean, and we received a letter also from Peter, mailed from Greece. We hope that you had a very good time, and also enjoyed going on around the world.
My leg is getting along well. I am still using the crutches (usually just one crutch), and next week I shall go in to San Luis Obispo to see the doctor, and find out whether he thinks that I can give up the crutches, probably using a cane for a while. I can stand on my right leg now, but I think that the extra use that I have been putting it to during the last week, when I have used one crutch, has made it sore.
Do you have any information about the use of nicotinic acid or nicotinamide in the treatment of schizophrenia? I have formulated a rather general idea on which this has a bearing. It is that those vital substances that are manufactured in considerable quantities by many animals but for which human beings have lost the power of manufacture (so that they have become vitamins or essential amino acids or other essential substances obtained in foods) may be of benefit when provided in considerably larger quantities than minimal amounts required to prevent a decline in health. Ascorbic acid is an example. The mutation leading to the loss of the ability to manufacture it seems to have occurred rather recently, perhaps around ten million years ago, as Indicated by the fact that human beings, gorillas, and other primates do not have this power, whereas essentially all other animals have the power of manufacturing it. The rate at which animals manufacture it corresponds to the ingestion of around 1 to 10 grams per day, much more than the usually recommended intake for this vitamin.
I do not know what the situation is as to the ability to manufacture nicotinamide. Dr. Albrecht is going to hunt through the literature, to see which animals require it as a vitamin and which have the power of manufacturing it, and also to find out the rate at which animals manufacture it.
Dr. A. Hoffer has, as you know, been using nicotinic acid or nicotinamide in amounts of three grams per day (one gram after each meal) in the treatment of nearly all of his patients, and he has reported good results. He has been criticized, and there is, I think, ground for criticism, but another Canadian physician has made a test, in one of the mental hospitals, and has reported a significant improvement in patients receiving nicotinic acid or nicotinamide, in addition to other treatment, as compared with those receiving a placebo.
Nicotinic acid and nicotinamide are no more toxic than sodium chloride. Something like one-half or a pound constitutes the LD50.
Mental disease is one of the manifestations of pellagra, and It is cured by nicotinic acid or nicotinamide. This may have been what caused Dr. Hoffer; to try these substances.
Patients with mental disease are often handled by changing conditions of life enough to permit them to resist environmental stress, and get along satisfactorily. It seems to me that a change in the internal environment of the person, even though it were not a great change, might be enough to permit him to get along, and that several kinds of supportive chemotherapy might be used together, along with psychotherapy and whatever other treatment is necessary. I would like to know whether patients are helped somewhat by the regular ingestion of three grams a day of ascorbic acid and also of three grams a day of nicotinamide, and, perhaps, some quantities of other vital substances. Nicotinic acid and nicotinamide are cheap - only about one cent a gram.
It may be that this idea is already in the literature. I would be grateful to you if you could give me references, in case that you have heard it expressed before.
Much love from,
Daddy Pauling
September
6, 1966
