![]() ![]() ![]() In very severe cases, they experienced hallucinations. The ailment became known as 'The Danbury Shakes' in the community of Danbury where hat making was a major industry. Stumbling about in a confused state with slurred speech and trembling hands, affected hatters were sometimes mistaken for drunks. Mercury poisoning attacks the nervous system, causing drooling, hair loss, uncontrollable muscle twitching, a lurching gait, and difficulties in talking and thinking clearly. Over time, the hatters started exhibiting apparent changes in personality and also experienced tremors or shaking. "In the late 1800s hat makers, or hatters, used to use mercury nitrate when working with beaver fur to make felt. 23, Ohio Indoor Air Quality Coalition, 2008. The dictionary definition of mad as a hatter at Wiktionary. ![]() Says she, Sam, I do believe you are a born fool, I vow." See also Ĭanadian author Thomas Chandler Haliburton used the phrase twice in his 1835 book The clockmaker or the sayings and doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville: "And with that he turned right round, and sat down to his map and never said another word, lookin' as mad as a hatter the whole blessed time" and "Father he larfed out like any thing I thought he would never stop – and sister Sall got right up and walked out of the room, as mad as a hatter. TICKLER (aside to SHEPHERD.): He's raving. NORTH: Many years – I was Sultan of Bello for a long period, until dethroned by an act of the grossest injustice but I intend to expose the traitorous conspirators to the indignation of an outraged world. XL1V, there is a conversation between a group of fictional characters: In a section of the January–June 1829 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, headed Noctes Ambrocianæ. Corbett managed to escape, and he was never seen again. After a few years, Corbett was even more mad than people had once thought, and he was thrown into an insane asylum. After investigation, Corbett was forgiven for his disobedience, but left the army and went back to hat making. He was considered "mad as a hatter" for going against orders when he had Booth cornered in a barn in Virginia, and shooting Booth instead of taking him alive. It is believed that the effects of his early life job affected his decision-making for his future. According to A Dictionary of Common Fallacies (1980), "'mad' meant 'venomous' and 'hatter' is a corruption of 'adder', or viper, so that the phrase 'mad as an atter' originally meant 'as venomous as a viper'."īoston Corbett, who shot Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, spent his early life as a hat maker. Lexicographers William and Mary Morris in Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1977) favour this derivation because "mad as a hatter" was known before hat making was a recognized trade. ![]()
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