This book is a feast for the mind and the spirit: the autobiography of one of the great doctors of the 20th century, Dr. Abram Hoffer. For those of us who have learned, through painful personal experience that drugs, surgery, and most of high-tech medicine offer only very temporary benefits, but rarely if ever a cure, this book tells the wonderful story of the rebirth of nutritional medicine. Based on the science of biochemistry, now known as orthomolecular medicine. Here we follow the journey of its founder: from his Saskatchewan farm childhood, subsequent training in bio-chemistry and agricultural science, his early insights into the central importance to human and animal health of soil and plant food quality, to his specialization in psychiatry, professorship at the University of Saskatchewan, and his daily work with patients. We learn of his disillusionment with traditional methods of treating the mentally ill and we share his excitement of discovery as we follow his dramatic case histories, which unfold like detective-stories, as he uncovers the connection between deficiencies in specific vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids and mental illness. Once teamed up with the great Linus Pauling, we re-live their research odysseys that led to modern orthomolecular medicine, transforming psychiatry, the treatment of cancer and chronic disease, and offering patients recovery, not merely death-watch maintenance therapies. In addition to Dr. Hoffer’s many fruitful years working with Pauling, we also meet many colleagues who helped design the rigorous research programs for orthomolecular medicine. Finally, we read how Dr. Hoffer patiently and determinedly handled the attitude of medical authorities bent on preserving the status quo rather than focus on the suffering of patients. Reading this book you will regain hope in both medicine and humanity. Dr. Hoffer, now in his mid-eighties, still practices medicine in Victoria , BC .“When Drs Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond discovered, in the 1950s, that high doses of vitamins B3 and C were an excellent treatment for schizophrenia and that niacin lowered cholesterol, they were undermining the reigning medical paradigms for psychiatry and cardiovascular disease. However, their research has been consistently supported ever since. Vitamins not only treat deficiency diseases but, at high doses, they also prevent and cure other illnesses. Fathering a new paradigm does not promote popularity. Fortunately, Dr Hoffer is not justhighly intelligent, he has consistently proven to be able to stand up for the truth, regardless of personal cost. Look around you, there are health food stores everywhere - now thank Abram Hoffer for his courage.” --- from the publisher |