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In 1954, this paper was written by Dr. Humphry Osmond and was part of the Hospital Archives.

Schizophrenia
That sinister and enigmatic word has invaded art, literature, history, the law and recently even political orations. It appears in films and broadcasts yet how many people could define it : not one in ten thousand. It is called popularly "split mind" and this is thought to mean that double personality such as Jekyll and Hyde, which it certainly is not.
It has been called the scourge of our troubled age, though there is little evidence that we are more prone to it than previous generations. Some say that it is the result of the unwholesome stresses of our civilization, but from what we can discover schizophrenia is not bounded by climate, color, race or culture. It seems to be an ailment universal to mankind.
What then is schizophrenia? It is a group of mental illnesses which includes those that Kraepelin, the great German 19th Century psychiatrist, called dementia praecox, and others which were not in his classification. Eugene Bleuler, a Swiss, introduced the term in 1910, and in our opinion, since the Greek allows it, rather than "split" mind it should be called the shattered mind. These illnesses fill about one-fifth of all the hospital beds in Europe and North America and must account for over a half million people. It is the most costly and crippling adversary facing medicine today.
About one person in a hundred develops schizophrenia, and at least one-third of the sufferers are permanently damaged by it. Young men and women in the prime are stricken by it most frequently, and those who do not recover spend many years in mental hospital. Those who live and work with this monstrous illness are always being surprised by its vagaries. Within a few weeks a cheerful and active young man becomes so degraded that if allowed to he will eat his own excrement.
While a "hopeless" lunatic, long forgotten in the back wards of a mental hospital may, without any special treatment, in the space of another few weeks become well. No one knows why. It doesn't happen often like that, but that it happens at all is astonishing. However these dramatic illnesses are less frequent than those in which the sick person becomes increasingly odd, seclusive, shut-in and apathetic.
You will ask the cause of such a grave illness and here doctors differ. Everything from lack of mother love to a poor physical inheritance, from unkindness engendered by a competitive society, to a yeast-like organism, has its supporters. Where there are many opinions and no proof, men hold to their fancies with sturdy obstinacy. We fancy a toxic substance which has not yet been identified and in this we follow Eugene Bleuler and his even greater pupil C.G.Jung.
While doctors disagree as to the cause of an illness which is so costly in money and suffering, that one is never sure which astronomical figure to choose, most people would like to know something about the illness and what can be done about it. It is an illness in which there are changes in thinking, perceiving, mood and often bodily posture which may last a few days or a whole lifetime. This altered experience naturally results in altered behaviour. It occurs in all races and classes and has been seen in most age groups, but predominates in among those from 15 - 40. There is evidence that inheritance plays a part in the development. No one has shown that the brain or central nervous system is damaged in any way. In typical cases the patient is aware of his surroundings and his memory for recent and long past events is good.
You may feel that you have asked for bread and have had an academic brick thrown at you. You would like to know what it feels like to feel to be insane. It is not possible to describe this in a brief article, but books like Thomas Hennell's masterpiece The Witnesses (Peter Davies), C.K. Ogden's Kingdom of the Lost (Bodley Head), the wonderful novels of Charles Williams (Faber)and the appalling works of Franz Kafka (Secker) allow us to glimpse a world which is mercifully hidden from most of us. For those who wish to know more there is (under proper medical guidance), the path of personal discovery through the alkaloid mescalin and similiar substances. This reveals aspects of reality for which Yeats "terrible beauty" is the only adequate description. Experience of this sort are only just communicable by literary artists such as Mr. Aldous Huxley in this recent book; most of us are left shaken and inarticulate.
If you are a practical man you are probably saying "what's the use of it?" Mescalin and compounds like it produce what we call a "model psychosis", a miniature disaster of the mind, which, unlike those overwhelming mental illnesses that keep people in hospital for years on end, lasts only a few hours. Like any other model our model illnesses can teach us about the real thing, if we use them properly.
No explorer can ever be absolutely safe. Those who take these strange substances are like test pilots, but the plane is their own mind and body. One day we may look upon those volunteers who undertake these expeditions into another reality with the same respect that we treat pioneers of the air. If we learn how to alter or even prevent our model illnesses from occurring we may be able to attack the real ones with greater precision. At present our treatments, although sometimes effective are crude and we do not know why they work.
One day we shall treat these great illnesses as surely as physicians of the body treat diabetes or pernicious anaemia. Just how soon the day comes depends not a little upon every reader of this article, because it is your support not only in money but in encouragement which keeps researchers going in spite of difficulty and disappointment inseparably from such a task.
But illness is only the start. You want to know, just as much as we do, the meaning of these beautiful, awe-inspiring and frightening things. How do they come about? Can science help us to unravel this tangled and mysterious skein which is part of the essential nature of man? We believe that it can, and that in the unravelling we shall discover not only our limitations, but our extraordinary potentialities, and so check the disillusionment and despair of an age which seems so chaotic. It is by understanding our own nature and through our own nature that of the universe, that we shall foster the reverence for life of which Albert Schweitzer speaks. This reverence for life increases our love and respect for our fellow men and woman without bar of creed or color, because it springs from a vision far outstripping the imagination in its glory. Science at present is the only universal language and it is fitting that it should proclaim clearly and urgently a message of life and hope.

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Dr. Humphry Osmond
Circa 1960
Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada


Credits:
SLHM