In 1847 Alfred Baring Garrod discovered high levels of uric acid in gout patients’ blood and he proposed that the uric acid was crystallizing in the joints of these patients causing pain. Awesome work Alfred you nailed it! But he then thought that mania and other psychological disorders were caused by a gout of the brain (not even close).
Gout is caused by uric acid falling out of solution and forming crystal in your joints, it does this because uric acid isn’t very soluble. Our friend Alfred found that lithium treatment can help prevent the build up of these crystals because lithium makes uric acid more soluble (by forming lithium urate). Unfortunately, the levels of lithium required to treat gout are incredibly toxic. But interestingly, he found that people’s mood stabilized on the lithium gout treatment.
This led to the idea that mood disorders have something to do with uric acid (which they don’t). BUT nevertheless, lithium is a very effective treatment of several mood disorders and is still widely used today. So even though Alfred was way off on why it worked, he still found that it did work. In Alfred’s defence we still don’t really know how lithium works today!
Lithium citrate was one of the seven ingredients of 7-UP (one theory postulates that this is where the name comes from) to help stabilize the jitters, because it was actually sold as a medical treatment. Coca-Cola was sold for medicinal use as well. If anyone knows why we have a history of turning medical treatments into popular drinks please tell me, it is weird and concerning.
Tristan Wadsworth