Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough

In this comprehensive history, Brown, a psychiatrist and professor at Brown University, meticulously traces the research, theories, and people behind the discovery of lithium as a successful bipolar disorder treatment. Beginning with a brief overview of how this disorder has been understood and treated over the centuries—from the Greek origin of the word “melancholy” to the padded rooms of the 19th century and the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy in the 1940s—Brown then turns to the career of Australian physician John Cade. A POW in Japanese-controlled Singapore during WWII, Cade began studying psychiatric disorders while running the hospital in Changi prison; exhaustive experiments on guinea pigs after the war eventually led him to test lithium. Cade fades from the narrative after his seminal 1949 paper on the material as a successful mental health treatment. Instead, Brown covers the various doctors who picked up Cade’s torch in the ’50s and ’60s, finally settling on Danish psychiatrist Mogens Schou, who pinpointed lithium’s prophylactic nature. Cade returns at the conclusion, where Brown discusses his legacy through lithium’s still vital role in mental health treatments. While occasionally excessive in the attention paid to technical detail, Brown’s account nonetheless makes for a worthy chronicle of a significant topic. (July)