In 1856 a Parisian physician called Auguste Delpech presented a paper to the French Academy of Medicine in which he described the strange behaviour of workers employed in the production of India rubber. Many of these men, Delpech reported, had symptoms of mental derangement resembling acute alcohol intoxication. They suffered from impaired memory, vague and confused thoughts, restlessness and insomnia. In particular, they exhibited changeable moods of hilarity and manic outbursts followed by drowsiness, apathy and inertia. The source of the problem, accurately identified by Delpech, was the inhalation of large quantities of a highly neurotoxic compound called carbon disulphide. This was used to soften and spread the latex gum in order to produce rubber sheets. Early rubber making was largely a cottage industry, carried out in poorly ventilated workrooms. With the expansion of the industry into larger scale production during the second half of the nineteenth century, further reports of “insanity” associated with rubber manufacture began to appear in the medical literature. In 1902, the physician Thomas Oliver, reporting on the British Committee on Dangerous Trades of 1899, described episodes during the manufacture of mackintoshes in which workers suffered from “an extremely violent maniacal condition whereby, in their frenzy, [they] have precipitated themselves from the top rooms of the factory to the ground”. It was further observed that the windows of rubber vulcanizing rooms were frequently barred as a preventive measure.