'Lithium' Is A Homage To A Drug — And To The Renegade Side Of Science
By celebrating those who applied the substance as a drug, Walter A. Brown aims to raise awareness — and to demolish what remains of the myth that scientific progress is driven by rigorous dispassion.
Like any good story about a scientific discovery, Walter A. Brown's account of the history of lithium features plenty of improvisation, conjecture and straight-up kismet.
Unlike many such stories, though, it also features a fair share of personal bias, senseless puttering and random speculation â on part of these scientific researchers.
Brown, a practicing psychiatrist and university professor of more than 40 years, seems to have been drawn to write as much because of lithium's fluky history and overlooked importance (for many years, he argues, it was "the Cinderella of psychiatric drugs") as by
