The mason, like the miner, is particularly liable to suffer from the presence of irritating substances in the lungs. It has been asserted that in Edinburgh members of the craft rarely live more than fifty years. This is doubtless owing to the nature of the material they work upon. There is great reason to suppose that the degree of damage done to the delicate air-cells of the lung is to be measured by the nature of the particles inhaled. Thus, the ragged portions of granite detached by the chisel are much more likely to do harm than the less irregular dust of the bricklayer. In this manner we can account for the high rate of mortality said to exist among the masons of our northern metropolis. The scourers in the potteries exercise their fearful trade in an atmosphere loaded with pulverised flints, a mineral dust of the most distressing character: we are not surprised, therefore, to hear that in this process pulmonary disease is still more rampant than among the Edinburgh masons, and is little inferior to that of the dry grinders of Sheffield, who receive into their lungs jagged particles of steel as well as grindstone dust.[52] It will be unnecessary to consider all the trades which are affected by dust, inasmuch as the artisans employed in them are similarly subjected to pulmonary affections, if not in a like degree. Thus millers are rendered consumptive and asthmatic by the floating meal of their mills; snuff-makers by the snuff which pervades the air of their places of work; pearl-button-makers suffer still more from the same cause; and the men of Sheffield who haft knives with cocoa-wood or ebony are affected with a disease exactly like the hay-asthma. The shoddy-grinders of the West Riding, who grind and break up rags in a machine called “a devil,” are subjected to what they term the shoddy fever, in consequence of the devil’s dust given off in the tearing process. The dressers and preparers of hair, especially of foreign hair, are speedily broken in health by the dust and stench produced by their operations.
The evil effects arising from the prosecution of these trades sink into insignificance, however, when compared with the destruction caused by the floating fluff of flax-mills. These mills employ children of tender years, who have to work in an atmosphere loaded with vegetable particles to such a degree, that in a measure it clouds the vision. The hecklers are the chief sufferers in this department of industry, especially the children, who are, many of them, forced to work the same time as adults—that is, as long as human nature can possibly hold out. We shall have more to say, however, when we come to consider the effects of bleaching and dyeing works, respecting those trades which exhaust the youthful powers of large portions of the working population, and thus do infinitely more damage to the race than the more curious diseases of smaller trades, which may be severe enough, but do not affect more than infinitesimal portions of the population.
It would be supposed that workers on decomposing vegetable and animal matter would suffer a sickness and mortality only inferior to the artisans subjected to the emanations of poisonous metals. A priori, we should say, for instance, that dustmen, night men, and the workers in sewers, would be amongst the most unhealthy of the working classes, and, indeed, routine sanitarians would summarily tell us that such must be the case. The begrimed and dusty scavenger, whose very name is a reproach, spends the best part of his life in clearing away the disgusting refuse of civilization; he has yet another duty to perform which brings him into still closer contact with unsavoury emanations. The lay-stall, or scavengers’ yard, is of course a huge collection of the sweepings of the streets, the refuse of the markets, and the night-soil and dust of the houses, but it is not allowed to remain in a fermenting and indiscriminate mass. Almost as soon as it is deposited, men, women, and boys are employed to sift and sort the heap; bones, glass, woollen and linen rags, old iron and other metals, have to be eliminated from the mass and set aside, and the coals and great cinders are extracted from the useless ashes by the “hill-men.” It would scarcely be possible to bring human life into closer contact with filth of every kind than we find it to be in the workers in these lay-stalls. Yet, strange to say, Dr. Guy, who has investigated their sanitary condition, finds them to be among the healthiest of our working population. “They are, with a very few exceptions,” he tells us, “a healthy-looking, ruddy-complexioned race;” that is, they wear their natural rouge under their artificial tint, reversing the more fashionable method of May Fair.
“One or two boys,” he tells us, “whom I saw at work, would have been excellent models for the artist.” Our London readers will perhaps remember to have seen troops of robust and rosy-looking young women, not perhaps in afternoon toilet, making their way, about five o’clock, from the Marble Arch across Hyde Park; these are the “hill-women,” chiefly Irish, trooping home to the rookeries of Westminster; their appearance quite confirms Dr. Guy’s views as to the healthful appearance of these workers. The master scavengers, who live with all their families amid these heaps of dusty desolation, excite the admiration of this searcher after truth still more; and at last, breaking out of the calm unimpassioned manner which the philosophical statist, who deals only with general truths, is wont to impose upon himself, he thus fairly gives vent to his admiration for the genus dustman:—
“To conclude this account of the health of this very useful class of men, I will merely add that the score or so of master scavengers who were brought together on more than one occasion by the trial already alluded to (an indictment for nuisance against a lay-stall keeper), as the origin of these inquiries, are the healthiest set of men I have ever seen. I do not think, whether in town or country, such a body of men could be brought together, except by selection; and it is not going too far to assert of them, that if the comparison were limited to the inhabitants of London, or our large towns, no score of selected tradesmen could be found to match the same number of scavengers brought casually together.”
This is high praise, and doubtless deserved; but few people, however, would have suspected that Hygeia clasped so closely to her bosom the grimy scavenger in his filthy frock. Dr. Guy, however, gives us hard figures for his pleasant flourishes. If we compare the scavenger with other workmen placed under somewhat similar circumstances, he rises triumphant over them. Thus whilst the bricklayer’s labourer, generally a very poor Irishman, it is true, suffers from fever, a ratio of 35½ per cent., and the brickmaker 21 per cent., the scavenger experiences only 8 per cent. of illness from the same cause. This result does seem astonishing when we remember that sanitarians sometimes attribute so much illness to the presence of a neglected dust-heap; but as Dr. Guy very justly remarks, those emanations which may prove injurious when confined within a small space—and our houses, like bell glasses, cover and keep in numberless impurities—become innoxious when fully exposed to the air. We suspect, however, that the power of ashes to absorb noxious emanations of all kinds, is at the bottom of the striking immunity which the scavenger exhibits from all febrile complaints. Nightmen and sewer-men, again, are brought into direct communication with the most disgusting, and as the public are led to suppose, the most poisonous animal effluvia; they stir in the very nidus of fever, yet it has been remarked by many observers that they are singularly exempt from this disease. Sir Anthony Carlisle tells us that out of fifty men employed in the sewers in his time, only three had had fever. Thakrah declares that out of eighteen examined by his assistant, only two had even slight disorders, and they informed him that appetite was increased by the effluvia; and finally Dr. Guy tells us that out of thirty-four nightmen examined by him, only one had had an attack of fever, and he only through being out of work for three weeks; he suffered, in short, from change of air, and perhaps want of food. Dr. Guy, in the little pamphlet we have already quoted from, states a most remarkable fact, illustrative of the changes of opinion, even amongst medical men, relative to the effects of snuffing sewer emanations. He says, that a gentleman who accompanied him in one of his inspections over a scavenger’s yard, informed him that, “he perfectly well recollects thirty years ago, when he was a lad, seeing as many as twelve patients directed by the faculty of that day to walk round the shoots for the night-soil on his father’s premises; and he appealed for confirmation of this statement to his brother, who said that he had seen scores of patients industriously inhaling this curious dose of physic.” Thakrah, who wrote his celebrated “Treatise on the Effects of Trades and Professions on Health,” about this period, tells us that the parents of consumptive youth, in his time, brought them up to the business of a butcher, in the hope of averting that formidable malady. In endeavouring to avoid Scylla, they fell into Charybdis, inasmuch as it is a well-ascertained fact that butchers, although exempt from consumption and scrofula, are very prone to inflammatory diseases. They are seldom ill, but when ill, it goes hard with them,—so much so, that, as a class, these jolly, red-faced men, the very pictures of their own beef, are but short-lived. The effects of animal emanations, and the contact of animal substances with the skin in protecting workmen from consumption, is a very remarkable circumstance. Tanners constantly at work among tan-pits, are rarely, we believe, attacked with phthisis; and those artisans in the woollen-manufacture termed cloth-piecers, whose skins are smeared with oil in the course of the day, present a remarkable contrast to the workers in cotton factories,—their flesh being plump and rosy, and their muscles strong. Mr. Thompson of Perth, who has investigated this subject, found the weight of one hundred young persons, so employed, increased in three months 575 lbs., giving an average increase of 5¾ lbs., and in eight selected cases the gain during the same brief period averaged no less than 17 lbs. each person. The beneficial effect of this department of the woollen-manufacture is so well known, that in Yorkshire the better classes frequently send the delicate members of their families to the woollen-mills for the benefit of their health. The application of oil, especially of cod-liver oil, to the skin, has indeed been recommended to consumptive patients, as thereby a greater amount of carbonaceous material can be thrown into the system without deranging it than by any other. After having drawn attention to so many occupations which are positively injurious to artisans, it is at least gratifying to be able to point to one large and rapidly-increasing manufacture which is so clearly beneficial in its operations upon human health.
There is a class of artisans which suffers from the inhalation of poisonous matters into the lungs, like the grinders and the masons, &c., but the foreign matter here presents itself in the form of a subtle vapour, rather than in that of dust. We little think, when we strike a lucifer-match,—that incomparable product of civilization, whose inventor deserves a statue in every capital in Europe,—what suffering it may possibly have caused in its manufacture. The composition at the end of a match is composed of phosphorus combined with oxymuriate of potash and glue, made into a paste, and kept liquid by being placed over a heated metal plate. Into this composition the “dipper” dips the bundle of matches, and in doing so he is forced to inhale the vapour given off, which is strongly charged with phosphoric acid, the effect of which upon him is sometimes most disastrous. After a time he experiences most excruciating pains in the bones of the jaw, but principally in the lower one; they begin to swell, a purulent discharge takes place, and, finally, the bone dies and comes away. Mr. Stanley, one of the surgeons of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, had a patient who thus lost the whole of the lower jaw. There appears to be considerable doubt whether the poison acts locally or constitutionally. One would naturally suppose that if the action were local, it would first take effect upon the bones of the nose, but, as far as the experience of surgery goes, the “dipper” always preserves his nose intact. That the poisonous fumes have a certain constitutional effect, the aspect of the workman at once declares; cadaverous in complexion, emaciated to a degree, and painfully nervous, he presents the appearance of a person suffering from the presence of some irritant poison in the blood. It certainly is very remarkable that phosphorus, which, in the form of phosphate of lime, is a very important constituent of bone, should have such an extraordinary effect upon it when received into the system in the manner we have described. We are not aware that this drug, when received into the stomach only, has ever produced the local effect noticed; but, without doubt, it is the quantity of the poisonous agent to which the workman is subjected, as he not only receives the fumes directly into his mouth and air-passages in the act of “dipping,” but the whole atmosphere of the factory becomes so impregnated with phosphorus, in consequence of its volatilization when the process of drying the matches is being proceeded with, that his clothes even become saturated to such an extent that in the dark they appear quite luminous. In Vienna, where enormous numbers of lucifer-matches are made, necrosis of the jaw is of common occurrence among the workmen; and the German physicians believe that the disease arises principally in persons of scrofulous habit, the periosteum or lining membrane of whose bones are peculiarly liable to take on inflammatory action, the death of the bone following as a matter of course. If this view of the case be true, all scrofulous persons should be warned from the employment, as dangerous, and in all cases employers should adopt every precaution in their power to prevent the recurrence of such mischief to the employed. Mr. Stanley says that the oil of turpentine, which is a solvent of phosphorous, when exposed in saucers, absorbs the vapour which does so much mischief, and that its employment in a large lucifer-match factory in the neighbourhood of the London Hospital was attended with the happiest success. Thus we have another example of the power of the chemist to make the good elements of his craft do battle with the evil ones in the cause of humanity.
Another and more common instance, in which the workman is sacrificed to luxury, is the case of the water-gilder. The skill of this artisan is employed in gilding metals, principally silver, by the action of fire. The metal to be gilded is coated with an amalgam of gold and mercury, and is then exposed to the fumes of a charcoal fire, which drives off the mercury, and leaves the gold adherent to the metal. During the process the fumes of the mercury are inhaled by the workman, and, indeed, deposit their metalliferous particles over the entire surface of the skin. The result is, that he speedily becomes afflicted with mercurial tremor, or, in the language of the workshop, he gets “a fit of the trembles.” If he proceeds with his work the tremor rapidly increases. Dr. Watson, in describing a patient thus afflicted, says:—
“He was led into the room, walking with uncertain steps, his limbs trembling and dancing, as though he had been hung on wires. While sitting on a chair he was comparatively quiet,—you would not suppose that he ailed anything; but, as soon as he attempted to rise and to walk, his legs began to shake violently with a rapid movement. He could neither hold them steadily nor direct them with precision.”
Were it not painful to contemplate, the incoherent muscular action of workmen thus afflicted would appear ludicrous. In endeavouring to put his food into his mouth he will sometimes, as in chorea, bob it against his eye or his cheek; and extreme cases have been known in which the unfortunate water-gilder thus afflicted has been forced to take his food like a quadruped. As the disease increases, the complexion becomes of a brown hue, and presently delirium, and, lastly, want of consciousness supervenes. To this complexion comes the water-gilder; and as the silverer of looking-glasses is exposed to the action of mercury, both by touch and inhalation, the same effects are produced upon him. If the charming belle, as she surveys her beauty in the glass, could but for a moment see reflected this poor shattered human creature, with trembling muscles, brown visage, and blackened teeth, she would doubtless start with horror; but, as it is, the slaves of luxury and vanity drop out of life unobserved and uncared for, as the stream of travellers disappeared one by one through the bridge of Mirza. Happily, the subtle finger of electricity has in a measure emancipated the water-gilder from the horrors of his art. The voltaic battery now deposits the metal without the intervention of quicksilver, and science has eliminated another of those destructive agencies which have hitherto afflicted this class of artisans.