KOPIN 267Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior
I. G. Farreras, C. Hannaway and V. A. Harden (Eds.)
IOS Press, 2004
Psychopharmacology Research
in the 1950s
Irwin J. Kopin
I am delighted to have been asked to review the historical and critically
important contributions of the NIH to neuroscience and behavioral
research in the 1950s. In 1957, I arrived at the NIH after completing an
internship and a residency in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital.
During the end of my residency I applied to the Public Health Service
and was interviewed for an appointment at the then new NIH Clini
cal Center. Philippe V. Cardon, Jr., hired me as a Clinical Associate be
ginning July 1, 1957, but after a few months, I joined the first group
of physicians that began the Research Associates Training Program;
Seymour S. Kety was my mentor in that program.
My initial responsibility was to select and care for relatively healthy
schizophrenic patients who were admitted for a study of potential biologi
cal abnormalities that could account for their mental disorder. Because
I was obtaining spinal fluid from them for diagnostic purposes, I was
able to use some of the fluid to determine levels of 5-hydroxyindole acetic
acid (5-HIAA), the metabolite of serotonin, in the cerebrospinal fluid
(CSF). Albert Sjoerdsma’s group, in the National Heart Institute, had
recently discovered serotonin as the biogenic amine secreted by malig
nant carcinoid tumors. This amine was also present in the brain and it
was reasonable to suppose that its metabolite could be found in CSF.
Marian Kies, who was chief of the Section on Biochemistry in Kety’s
Laboratory of Clinical Science and who was working on a review of
experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, gave me some space in her
laboratory. I set up a relatively large desalting apparatus so that I could
concentrate the spinal fluid and perform paper chromatography.