After learning that mescaline induced hallucinations much like those reported by schizophrenics, the two researchers began to explore the idea that the disease was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. At a time when the role of brain chemistry in mental illness had not yet been established, this was a radical hypothesis. The two psychiatrists had observed that the molecular structure of mescaline closely resembled that of adrenaline. Could schizophrenia result from some kind of dysfunction in the metabolism of adrenaline, transforming it into a compound that produced the schizophrenic
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