1. Professor Schou has written about the early history of lithium therapy research at Aarhus: Schou, M. (1979) ‘Lithium research at the Psychopharmacology Research Unit, Risskov, Denmark: A historical account’. In, Schou, M. and Strömgren, E. (eds) Origin, Prevention and Treatment of Affective Disorders (London: Academic Press) 1–8.
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Schou, M. (1957) ‘Biology and pharmacology of the lithium ion’, Pharmacological Reviews, 9, 17–58.
4. Schou refers to the review of the history of lithium therapy compiled by Nathan Kline: Kline, N. S. (1969) ‘Lithium: the history of its use in psychiatry’, Modern Problems of Pharmacopsychiatry, 3, 75–92.
5. Schou, ‘Lithium research at the Psychopharmacology Research Unit’, I (note 1). It was not, of course, the first such trial in medicine. Schou (conversation, 18 March 1982) has noted that it might have been the influence of Rolv Gjessing’s work on periodic catatonia which had provided the main inspiration for the first lithium trial: Schou had spent some three months working with Gjessing.