About a month later I was in Freiburg, in Baden, and immediately on my arrival called on an old friend, and asked how he and all his were.
"Only fairly well," he replied. "We are all--the young people especially--suffering from sores. Whether it is the food--"
"Or," said I, interrupting him, "the paper."
Then I told him my experience.
"Why," said he, "a neighbour, a German baron, has his children ill in the same way."
At once he ran into the baron's house and told him what I had said. Both proceeded immediately to the public analyst with specimens of the papers from the rooms in which the children slept. The papers were found to be heavily laden with arsenic.
Unhappily, in spite of all precautions, the work at the arsenic mine and manufactory is prejudicial to health. The workers are disabled permanently at an average age of forty. Of deaths in the district, eighty-three per cent. are due to respiratory diseases, while sixty-six per cent. are due to bronchitis alone. For the last three years, out of every hundred deaths among persons of all ages in the parish of Calstock twenty-six have been due to diseases of the respiratory organs, but out of every hundred employés at the arsenic works who have died or become disabled eighty-three deaths have been due to respiratory diseases. It is evident that with such an unusual proportion of one particular disease in the most able-bodied portion of the community there must be a definite existing cause.
No doubt that a very minute amount of arsenic may pass through the nostrils and down the throat, but what is far more prejudicial than that is the sulphurous acid which cannot be excluded by the handkerchief and lint, but passes freely through both. This is extremely irritating to the mucous membrane. But the fact of working for hours with the breathing impeded by the wraps about mouth and nose is probably the leading cause of the mischief.
Suggestions of remedies have been made, but none practical. A mask has been proposed, but this does not answer, as it causes sores, and is difficult to keep clean.
Devon Consols produces about 150 tons of arsenic per month; Gawlor, 100 tons; Greenhill, 50; Coombe, 25; and Devon Friendship about the same. In all about 350 tons per month. This to the workers is worth £10 per ton, or a revenue to the neighbourhood of £42,000 per annum.