"Dr. S. Scott Alison: 'Spurious melanosis, or "black spit" of colliers, is a disease of pretty frequent occurrence among the older colliers, and among those men who have been employed in cutting and blasting stone dykes in the collieries. The symptoms are emaciation of the whole body, constant shortness and quickness of breath, occasional stitches in the sides, quick pulse, usually upward of one hundred in the minute, hacking cough day and night, attended by a copious expectoration, for the most part perfectly black, and very much the same as thick blacking in colour and consistence, but occasionally yellowish and mucous, or white and frothy; respiration is cavernous in some parts, and dull in others; a wheezing noise is heard in the bronchial passages, from the presence of an inordinate quantity of fluid; the muscles of respiration become very prominent, the neck is shortened, the chest being drawn up, the nostrils are dilated, and the countenance is of an anxious aspect. The strength gradually wasting, the collier, who has hitherto continued at his employment, finds that he is unable to work six days in the week, and goes under ground perhaps only two or three days in that time; in the course of time, he finds an occasional half-day's employment as much as he can manage, and when only a few weeks' or months' journey from the grave, ultimately takes a final leave of his labour. This disease is never cured, and if the unhappy victim of an unwholesome occupation is not hurried off by some more acute disease, or by violence, it invariably ends in the death of the sufferer. Several colliers have died of this disease under my care.'—Ibid. Appendix A, No. 2; App. pt. i. p. 415, 416.
"Dr. Makellar, Pencaitland, East Lothian: 'The most serious and fatal disease which I have been called to treat, connected with colliers, is a carbonaceous infiltration into the substance of the lungs. It is a disease which has long been overlooked, on account of the unwillingness which formerly existed among that class of people to allow examination of the body after death; but of late such a prejudice has in a great measure been removed. From the nature of Pencaitland coal-works, the seams of coal being thin when compared with other coal-pits, mining operations are carried on with difficulty, and, in such a situation, there is a deficiency in the supply of atmospheric gas, thereby causing difficulty in breathing, and, consequently, the inhalation of the carbon which the lungs in exhalation throw off, and also any carbonaceous substance floating in this impure atmosphere. I consider the pulmonary diseases of coal-miners to be excited chiefly by two causes, viz. first, by running stone-mines with the use of gunpowder; and, secondly, coal-mining in an atmosphere charged with lamp-smoke and the carbon exhaled from the lungs. All who are engaged at coal-pits here, are either employed as coal or stone miners; and the peculiar disease to which both parties are liable varies considerably according to the employment.'—Ibid. Appendix A, No. 3, p. 422. See also witnesses Nos. 7, 44, 112, 144, 146. For a full account of this disease, see reports of Drs. Alison, Makellar, and Reid, in the Appendix to the sub-commissioner's report for the East of Scotland."
Dr. Makellar gives the following remarkable evidence as to the efficacy of ventilation in obviating the production of this disease:—
"The only effectual remedy for this disease is a free admission of pure air, and to be so applied as to remove the confined smoke, both as to stone-mining and coal-mining, and also the introduction of some other mode of lighting such pits than by oil. I know many coal-pits where there is no black-spit, nor was it ever known, and, on examination, I find that there is and ever has been in them a free circulation of air. For example, the Penstone coal-works, which join Pencaitland, has ever been free of this disease; but many of the Penstone colliers, on coming to work at Pencaitland pit, have been seized with, and died of, this disease. Penstone has always good air, while it is quite the contrary at Pencaitland.'—Ibid. Appendix A, No. 3; App. pt. i. p. 422."
Other diseases, produced by employment in coal-mines, less fatal, but scarcely less painful, are rheumatism and inflammation of the joints.
Mr. William Hartell Baylis states that working in the cold and wet often brings on rheumatism. "More suffer from this than from any other complaint." [3] Asthma and rheumatism, which are so prevalent in other districts, are very rare in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. [4] But, in Derbyshire, "rheumatism is very general. I believe you will scarcely meet a collier, and ask him what he thinks of the weather, but he will in reply say, 'Why, his back or shoulders have or have not pained him as much as usual.'" [5]
George Tweddell, surgeon, Houghton-le-Spring, South Durham, says, in answer to the question—Are miners much subject to rheumatism?—"Not particularly so. Our mines are dry; but there is one mine which is wet, where the men often complain of rheumatism." [6]
Similar evidence is given by the medical and other witnesses in all other districts. Wherever the mines are not properly drained, and are, therefore, wet and cold, the work-people are invariably afflicted with rheumatism, and with painful diseases of the glands.
The sub-commissioner for the Forest of Dean gives the following account of a painful disease of the joints common in that district:—