As Joseph Stalin ordered his generals to fight off the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union he may also have been waging a personal battle against gout.
Scientists have suggested that he was undergoing treatment with lithium salts during the Second World War after finding traces in a book he was known to have read in 1942.
Lithium has been prescribed by doctors since the 19th century as a treatment for gout and mental illness but this is the first evidence of a connection to Stalin.
Researchers used acetate film to detect lithium compounds on numerous pages of Stalin’s copy of Tolstoy’s Ivan Grozny, a drama that portrayed the Russian leader Ivan the Terrible as a national hero. The film, which uses charged particles