Some Key Dates in Orthomolecular Medicine

Some Key Dates in Orthomolecular Medicine

Orthos is Greek for correct, right, straight, healthy. Orthomolecular means concerning the molecules. So, literally the word orthomolecular means the correct molecules.

Year
1954 Publication of the first double blind, placebo-controlled study in psychiatry: with niacin and niacinamide for schizophrenia. Clancy J, Hoffer A, Lucy J, Osmond H, Smythies J & Stefaniak B: Design and planning in psychiatric research as illustrated by the Weyburn Chronic Nucleotide Project. Bull Men Clinic, 18:147-153, 1954. [Later published in a major journal: Hoffer A, Osmond H, Callbeck MJ & Kahan I: Treatment of schizophrenia with nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. J Clin Exper Psychopathol 18:131-158, 1957]
1956 Publication of the book of the discoverer of vitamin B5, Roger J. Williams: Biochemical Individuality: The Basis for the Genetotrophic Concept
1971 ASA name changed to Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research
1957-60 Additional five double blind controlled, randomized studies with niacin for schizophrenia. These studies all showed a major improvement in the two-year recovery rate, from 35 to 75 percent
1960’s Linus Pauling reads the book, How to Live with Schizophrenia, by Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond. After reading he changed his mind from retiring, entering the new field of megavitamin therapy
1967 First issue of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (at that time the International Journal of Schizophrenia)
1968 Linus Pauling coined the term ‘orthomolecular’ in Science: Orthomolecular Psychiatry. Varying the concentrations of substances normally present in the human body may control mental disease. Science. 1968 Apr 19; 160(825):265-71
1987 Hoffer-Vickar Chair of Psychiatry, a Unit of Orthomolecular Clinical Research, at the Ben Gurion University in Tel Aviv (Israel), held by prof. Robert H. Belmaker
1994 The International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine founded
2006 Dr. Jeanne Drisko gets the first academic orthomolecular medical chair, the Hugh D. Riordan Professorship in Orthomolecular Medicine at the Kansas University Medical Center
2008 The Linus Pauling Event in ‘Schloss Anholt’ (Germany). In honor of the publication of the Science-paper on orthomolecular psychiatry by dr. Linus Pauling 40 years ago
2009 May 27th. Dr. Abram Hoffer passed away
2016 Creation and launch of of ION