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THE HISTORY OF LITHIUM What does LITHIUM mean? Lithium is from the Greek word “Lithos” which means “stone”. So Lithium is a stone. It got this name because it was discovered from a mineral source whereas the other two commom group 1 elements, sodium and potassium, were discovered from plant sources. Lithiums’ history goes back not just to the 1800’s, but possibly back into time in the Southern Egypt before the birth of Christ. Yet, Swedish student Johan August Arfvedson take credit for discovering it. It was discovered in the city of Stockholm in Sweden. In the year of 1890, pioneering doctors in Lithia Springs were eighty years ahead of Cade, Schou, and the FDA. The doctors Robert B. Cloud, Christopher Columbus Garrett, and W.H. Whitehead established the first hospital in America, the Lithia Springs Sanitarium, they used natural lithium water in treating alcoholism, opium addiction, and compulsive behavior. Manic depression had not been identified as a form of mental illness at that time. Later in the 1920’s Lithium was used as a sedative-hypnotic compound and also an anticonvulsant drug. Then in the 1940’s scientists saw lithium as a salt substitute for those with heart disease. In 1943 it was first recorded to have antimanic effects the research was by J. Cade in his Guinea Pig Test. It started to get a widespread use in the 1960’s.
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