For the maintenance dose, Cade in principle recommended, but seldom adhered to, 17 mmol/day. Lithium intoxication was not a serious clinical problem until 1949 when Cade introduced his fortuitously effective, but nevertheless high, dosage regimen which was continued until signs of recovery from mania appeared. Only slight or moderate symptoms of poisoning were reported in a very few cases during the period in question (1860 to 1930), when the popularity of these lithium-containing prophylactic drugs with a favourable therapeutic index was at its peak. Daily doses of 3 to 26 mmol of lithium were recommended as standards. Satisfactory prophylactic effects on periodic depression were directly claimed.

Among these disorders were mania, depression, acute mania, acute melancholia and periodic depression. Lithium salts, in particular the carbonate and citrate, were formerly in widespread use, forming part of alkaline salt mixtures which were used for treatment of the many disorders belonging to the uric acid diathesis.

Lithium toxicity antidote