brain gout gen.

[Elik43]

Garrod (1859) first described its medical use for the
treatment of rheumatic conditions and gout and
particularly mentions lithium use in ‘brain gout’, a
depressive disorder.
Lithium urate is the most
soluble salt of uric acid and hence was expected to
increase uric acid excretion to relieve gout. Lithium
carbonate and citrate were in the British Pharma-
copoeia of 1885. Lithium bromide was considered to
be the most effective of the bromide hypnotics.
It is exactly 50 years since lithium became the first
modern psychopharmacological agent: its clinical
value in psychiatry was discovered in 1949 by John
Cade, an Australian psychiatrist.