Lithium perspectives.

Progress in lithium treatment and research has been predicated on contributions from scientists of many different kinds. Examples are given of the systematic scientist, the artistic scientist, and the tenacious clinician. Lithium has attracted interest from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, partly because it is a small cation with many biological effects and partly because it counteracts both the manic and the depressive manifestations of manic-depressive illness. The seed John Cade sowed has grown to a large tree.