3 ms·
I’ve gotten to study a lot about hat making recently, and a little known fact about is that the use of mercuric nitrate in the felting process poisoned many wor
by NickNaraghi 2y ago
I’ve gotten to study a lot about hat making recently, and a little known fact about is that the use of mercuric nitrate in the felting process poisoned many workers in the hat factories, creating a condition called erethism, also called "mad hatter disease."
The exposure resulted in slurred speech, tremors, stumbling, and, in extreme cases, hallucinations.
It’s pretty likely that Corbett was exposed to the same!
- frenchwhisker 2y agoThis was mentioned in the article: > Having spent much of his life in the hat industry, Corbett could have been succumbing to mercury poisoning. The ill effects of the mercury vapors used in finishing, Corbett’s specialty, had become public by this time, even part of folklore after Lewis Carroll introduced the country to the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.
- gwern 2y agoThat's not 'little known'. That's the only thing almost anyone knows about hat-making.
- quuxplusone 2y agoAgreed. But that only makes me wonder: Out of the "a lot" that GP recently learned about hat-making, what are the next one or two most interesting factoids after that one?