ABRAHAM LINCOLN’s often bizarre behaviour has at last been explained. The
great US president suffered from mercury poisoning through taking antidepressant
pills laced with the toxic metal.
Lincoln was not always the calm, saintly president beloved of Americans.
Before he took office, he was renowned for his mood swings and bouts of rage. He
could get “so angry that he looked like Lucifer in an uncontrollable rage”, his
law partner reported. Others described his sadness and despair.
During this time, he was prescribed a drug known as “blue mass”, which
Norbert Hirschhorn, a medical historian based in New York, thinks…
