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Erethism or erethism mercurialis is a symptom complex of mercury poisoning, presenting with excessive shyness, timidity and social phobia[1][2]. This was common among hat makers of old England who used mercury to stabilize the wool in a process called felting. The character the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is often believed to be an example of someone suffering from erethism, but this account is apocryphal. The character was almost certainly based on Theophilus Carter, an eccentric furniture dealer who was well known to Carroll[3].
[edit]References
- ^ WHO (1976) Environmental Health Criteria 1: Mercury, Geneva, World Health Organization, 131 pp.
- ^ WHO. Inorganic mercury. Environmental Health Criteria 118. World Health Organization, Geneva, 1991.
- ^ Waldron HA (1983). "Did the Mad Hatter have mercury poisoning?". British Medical Journal 287 (6409): 1961. PMID 6418283.
[edit]External links
From: pubmedcentral.nih.gov
The principal psychotic features of erethism were excessive timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive. The victim also had a pathological fear of ridicule and often reacted with an explosive loss of temper when criticized.
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