Rudolph Virchow was a brilliant German doctor in the 19th century. Virchow advocated cellular pathology, which meant that diseases should be studied by looking at the cells under a microscope. Prior to this medicine was humoral, meaning that diseases were attributed to bad "humors", meaning blood, bile, etc. The idea of bad blood was not completely wrong, because some diseases are caused by toxic factors in the blood. These diseases include schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, etc. Even Huntington's chorea is thought to be associated with a toxic factor in the cerebrospinal fluid. However, Virchow's approach was used by Alzheimer, Nissl, and other great scientists. Norbert Weiner The late professor Norbert Weiner of MIT suggested mathematical models of the brain using the analogy of a computer. At first this idea was greeted with great enthusiasm, but it soon became clear that brain is much more complex than a computer. One human brain is more complex than the entire internet! Cybernetics has never led to a treatment for any brain disease, unfortunately. Linus Pauling preferred a biochemical approach, which is likely to prove much more fruitful. Unfortunately Pauling was too obsessed with vitamins, which led him to neglect amino acids. Mental diseases, including many forms of mental retardation, are likely to be amino acid diseases rather than vitamin diseases. Pauling started at Cal. Tech, but his orthomolecular ideas were formulated at Stanford, which was more liberal and open to new ideas. Pauling was considered a heretic by the Establishment. Unfortunately he is deceased, although he led a very long and productive life. He was still doing research in his nineties.