The Pauling family at Deer Flat Ranch, 1973. Peter stands at left.
[The life of Peter Pauling, part 8 of 9]
It was the 1970s, and Peter Pauling was studying the molecular arrangement and physiological effects of hallucinogens. The field of psychopharmacology, crucial to psychiatric treatments of mental disorders, was at the time almost brand new. Only in the 1960s did most physicians begin to consider the potential of psychoactive pharmacological treatments in treating mood disorders and neurologically based physical ailments. The role that different substances played in the alteration of brain chemistry, their influence on synaptic changes, and the modifications in nervous response that they could bring about were all still poorly understood.