http://edition.cnn.com:80/2008/WORLD/americas/03/07/great.discoveries/Australian psychiatrist John Frederick Joseph Cade once said, "I believe the brain, like any other organ, can get sick and it can also heal."
He made huge gains in healing the brain through his work with sufferers of bipolar disorder by discovering that lithium salts -- a naturally occurring chemical - could be used to treat the illness.
Previously, electro-convulsive therapy and lobotomies had been the major treatments for bipolar disorder.
After having been a prisoner of war in World War II, Dr. Cade served as the head of the Bundoora Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne Australia. It was at an unused kitchen in Bundoora where he conducted crude experiments that led to the discovery of lithium as a treatment of bipolar disorder. After trials on humans, Dr. Cade speculated that bipolar disorder was a "lithium deficiency disease" and that a dose of lithium had a calming effect.
Dr. Cade published findings in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1949 entitled "Lithium salts in the treatment of psychotic excitement."
He died in 1980. Lithium is still used successfully in the treatment of mental illness to this day.
