Acetyl choline as a therapeutic agent in mild psychiatric disorders.

IN 1950 LÃ3pez-Ibor adapted Fiamberti's use of acetyl choline in schizophrenia for the treatment of psychoneurotic disorders (Fiamberti, 1940, 1950a, b ; Lopez Ibor, 1950, 1952). Very few reports of the efficacy of this treatment have been published and they vary from the enthusiastic (Sargant, 1952; Phillips and Hutchinson, 1954) and the doubtful (Maclay, 1953), to the unequivocally rejecting (Hawkings and Tibbetts, 1956). The latter authors stressed the benefi cial psychotherapeutic atmosphere of the clinic, and showed that injections of sterile water produced equally as good results as acetyl choline. This paper is a further attempt to evaluate the specific effect of acetyl choline in the treatment of mild psychiatric disorders.