About this Event
Finding Sanity John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder
Author talk with Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore
The first biography of the ground breaking Australian doctor who discovered the first pharmacological treatment for mental illness.
For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives - if they survived - in and out of asylums, accumulating life's wreckage around them.
In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind - manic depression, or bipolar disorder. That doctor was John Cade and in that small kitchen he stirred up a miracle.
John Cade discovered a treatment that has become the gold standard for bipolar disorder - lithium. It has stopped more people from committing suicide than a thousand help lines.
Lithium is the penicillin story of mental health - the first effective Medic*tion discovered for the treatment of a mental illness - and it is, without doubt, Australia's greatest mental health story.
In our 150th year, hear from authors of books that centre around First Nations Healing practices, innovators and leaders in medicine and social change to M**der mysteries and novels grounded in medical history. These autobiographies, biographies and flights of fancy will inspire and amaze as fact is sometimes more surprising than fiction.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Seminar Room G03, 233 Bouverie St (Medical History Museum Building), 233 Bouverie St, Carlton, Australia
AUD 0.00
