SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE DISCOVERED THE HUMAN SOUL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 44, 28 September 1949, Page 3

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE DISCOVERED THE HUMAN SOUL

A little dirty-greyish powder in a test tube, consisting of 20 per cent phosphorus plus an as yet unidentified organic component, may prove to be the human soul in, crystalline form when the research carried on since 1945 by two Scandinavian scientists, Drs Ake Orstrom and Oddvar Skaug, at an insane asylum in Sweden has been brought to its anticipated conclusion, states the Swedish Bulletin. Laboratory research work aiming at identification of this mysterious ester has now been transferred to the biochemtstry department of the Nobel Institute of Medicine in Stockholm. Psychiaters in several countries are tensely awaiting the outcome of their labour, inasmuch as this in-significant-looking compound may contain the secret of schizophrenia —the most common form of insanity in man. The present research is based on the methods of studying metabolic disturbances with the aid of radioactive isotopes, originally developed by the Hungarian Noble Prize winner, von Hevesy. Everything points to the fact that schizophrenia is precisely such a disturbance since, inter alia, it rarely appears before puberty, which is the great horimonic revolution in the body. “If the true cause of schizophrenia is revealed, the mind can be repaired just like a machine because the human ‘soul’ in my opinion is simply a hormone-enzyme compound,” states one of the scientists.