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August 21, 2009
Lifetime spent healing
Doctor is a founder of orthomolecular medicine.
CASSANDRA FREEMAN
In 1952, a patient with catatonic schizophrenia lay in a Saskatchewan hospital bed, in a coma and dying. Dr. Abram Hoffer, then a research psychiatrist, was determined not to let him go. Hoffer's team decided to use a stomach tube and gave him a large dose of niacin and ascorbic acid. The next day the patient was sitting up in bed and eventually made a full recovery.
That day made Hoffer one of the key founders of what was later named orthomolecular medicine by Nobel laureate and scientist Linus Pauling.
Today, this controversial type of medicine refers to treatment using often larger than normal doses of vitamins, nutrients and chemicals already present in the body, like vitamin C and omega fatty acids. It is used to some degree by thousands of naturopaths, nutritionists and other health-care professionals around the world.
Hoffer was one of its champions and an inventor of various treatment regimens for 59 years. He died recently, in Victoria, B.C., at the age of 91. He was virtually the only psychiatrist in British Columbia who would both diagnose psychiatric patients and then treat them with special regimens designed, in many cases, to decrease or taper the dosage of their medications.
During his life as a psychiatric researcher, psychiatrist, doctor and nutritionist, Hoffer used orthomolecular medicine to treat patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and cancer, with varying outcomes, ranging from complete success to none at all.
But it was his many successes that caught the eye of thousands of patients around the world taking conventional medicines that did not work for them.
One of the most famous promoters of orthomolecular medicine is Margot Kidder, who played Superman's girlfriend in the original movie. In order to beat bipolar disorder, she put together her own regimen by researching orthomolecular medicine in the library and then later becoming Hoffer's patient.
Kidder also hosted a documentary by the International Schizophrenia Foundation that followed Hoffer's day-to-day treatment of a group of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Masks of Madness: Science of Healing is a living testament to Hoffer's compassion and brilliance using his own healing therapies.
Hoffer had a 90 percent success rate with 4,000 people suffering from schizophrenia during his lifetime, according to an obituary penned by his son, Dr. John Hoffer.
Israel and Rose Hoffer were Hungarian immigrants who fled religious persecution in 1904 to become farmers in southern Saskatchewan. They were so successful that their land and the area around it is called the locality of Hoffer. Their son Abram was born there in 1917.
Growing up, Hoffer would go to school and back on horseback and then tend to the family farm. His father wanted him to be a farmer but Hoffer opted for a life in science.
Though the mainstream medical establishment called his work unscientific, Hoffer's online bibliography indicates that he considered his treatments to be scientific in every way. During his lifetime, he produced 600 publications on orthomolecular medicine.
Hal Brown is a naturopath and one of the founders of Integrative Healing Arts in Vancouver. He told the Independent that Hoffer was a great contributor to orthomolecular medicine and way ahead of his time. And though many people called Hoffer a maverick, Brown saw him simply as "sitting in the sane seat."
"Hoffer was a great role model of being a scientist and doing things that he believed in – looking for real solutions to questions rather than going by the medical social norm," Brown said.
While he was alive, Brown recommended that many of his patients go to see Hoffer at his office in Victoria. And now, he said, in spite of Hoffer's death, people can still read about his treatments for various illnesses.
Hoffer passed away after a brief illness on May 27. The International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine is inviting people to read about Hoffer at orthomed.org.
Cassandra Freeman is a Vancouver freelance journalist with a background in mental health.
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