John Cade's discovery of lithium's role in treating manic depression is widely regarded as the medical breakthrough that has led to successful management of the condition that currently afflicts up to two per cent of the world's population His wartime experiences during World War II convinced him that nutrition and body chemistry were two important determining factors in mental health. Electric shock treatments, lobotomies and Freudian psychotherapy were the main treatments for depression at that time, so Dr. Cade set to looking into chemical alternatives. While investigating potential anticonvulsant agents in a hospital pantry in 1940, he suspected that salt lithium had a sedative effect in guinea pigs. He tested the drug for side effects on himself and then successfully trialed lithium on patients. His results were published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) in 1949 and it revolutionised the way the world thought about mental illness, marking the beginning of psychopharmacology – the use of drugs to manage psychiatric conditions. The MJA reported in July 2004 that Cade’s article was the number one most cited MJA article. | 
