The discovery of it is pretty interesting.

Lithium-rich mineral springs have historically been touted for their healing properties. It was first used for mania in the late 1800s, with Denmark leading the way, but little was published about the medication for more than half a century.

https://www.verywellmind.com/lithium-the-first-mood-stabiliz...

This is a good argument as to why we should look closely at traditional medicines of various cultures. We (1) coevolved with this stuff and (2) have gone through generations of trial and error.

I'm a believer in modern scientific medicine, but think we often have it backwards. Before reinventing the wheel we should exhaustively test what we used traditionally. Maybe the reason we don't do much of that is that it's not possible to patent, and so there's no financial incentive to do so?

There seems to be a good bit of different literature studying traditional cultural practices. Maybe it flies under the radar compared to flashy high-tech stuff. Below is a link to related articles about fermented beverages.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from...

I absolutely agree with this. We should go through the many cultures' lists of traditional medicines with the lens of modern chemistry and determine what compounds lead them to be effective pharamacologically.

You do realize what you're proposing happened and happens extensively?

I've read a decent chunk of that research, but it's often relegated to backwater low-reputation journals focused on alternative medicine and is largely ignored by mainstream science. For an example, see the research on various traditional sleep-inducing drugs.

It also doesn't make its way into mainstream practice among GPs and psychiatrists. As an example, which mainstream practitioner would ever prescribe or recommend curcurmin with piperine for any condition, aside from alternative medicine practitioners? Which psychiatrist would recommend EPA fish oil for depression? I could go on. The research that does exist is largely ignored.

Not in that way, no. Pharma, on the other hand, often looks into various remedies etc. in order to draw from and produce more distilled and controllable substances. Aspirin for example, from 'cook a tree bark and drink the solution' into a pill process. Penicillin.. etc.