Derangements of the digestive organs should be watched with great care. If they appear to arise from the poison of lead, the individual should leave off work with the very first symptom, and take a laxative. Habitual constipation should be provided against.
The nature of the diet of the workmen is of some consequence. It should be as far as possible of a nutritive and digestible kind. Mérat condemns in strong terms the small tart wines generally used by the lower ranks of his countrymen. They constitute a very poor drink for all artizans; and are peculiarly ill adapted for those who work with lead, because, besides being at times themselves adulterated with that poison, they are also apt to disorder the bowels by their acidity. Beer is infinitely preferable. Various articles of diet have been recommended as tending to impede the operation of the poison. Hoffmann recommends brandy, the efficacy of which few workmen will dispute. There is some reason for believing that the free use of fat and fatty articles of food is a preservative. Dehaen was informed by the proprietor and the physician of a lead mine in Styria, that the work-people were once very liable to colic and palsy, but that, after being told by a quack doctor to eat a good deal of fat, especially at breakfast, they were exempt for three years.[[1372]] Another fact of the kind was communicated to Sir George Baker by a physician at Osterhoüt, near Breda. The village contained a great number of potters, among whom he did not witness a single case of lead colic in the course of fifteen years; and he attributes their immunity to their having lived much on cheese, butter, bacon, and other fatty kinds of food.[[1373]] Mr. Wilson says, in his account of the colic at Leadhills in Lanarkshire, that English workmen, who live much on fat meat, suffer less than Scotchmen, who do not.[[1374]]
Professor Liebig says that lead colic is unknown in all white-lead manufactories, where the workmen use as a beverage lemonade or sugar-water acidulated with sulphuric acid; and it was stated above that the same announcement has been made by Mr. Gendrin. This, however, is doubtful. The prophylactic effects of sulphuric acid have been denied in France by M. Tanquerel,[[1375]] and M. Grisolle;[[1376]] the latter of whom in particular says that no advantage whatever was derived from it at the white-lead manufactory of Clichy near Paris.
Some have likewise proposed as an additional preservative, that the exposed parts of the body should be anointed with oily or fatty matters. But Mérat maintains with some reason, that the lead will be thereby enabled to penetrate the cuticle more easily by friction and pressure.
The observance of the preceding rules will depend of course in a great measure on the intelligence and docility of the workmen. It would appear that particular care should be taken in hot weather, statistical facts having shown that three times as many workmen are attacked in Paris during the month of January as in July.[[1377]]
Some other objects of much consequence are to be attained by the humanity and skill of the masters.
The workshop should be spacious, and both thoroughly and systematically ventilated, the external air being freely admitted when the weather will allow, and particular currents being established, by which floating particles are carried away in certain invariable and known courses. Miners and others who work at furnaces in which lead is smelted, fused, or oxidated, should be protected by a strong draught through the furnaces. According to Mr. Braid, wherever furnaces of such a construction were built at Leadhills, the colic disappeared; while it continued to recur where the furnaces were of the old, low-chimneyed form. Manufacturers of litharge and red-lead used formerly to suffer much in consequence of the furnaces being so constructed as to compel them to inhale the fine dust of the oxides. In drawing the furnaces the hot material is raked out upon the floor, which is two or three feet below the aperture in the furnace; and the finer particles are therefore driven up and diffused through the apartment. But this obvious danger is now completely averted by a subsidiary chimney, which rises in front of the drawing aperture, and through which a strong current of air is attracted from the apartment, the hot material on the ground performing the part of a fire.
In white-lead manufactories a very important and simple improvement has been effected of late in some places by abandoning the practice of dry-grinding. In all manufactories of the kind, the ultimate pulverizing of the white lead has been long performed under water. But in general the preparatory process of rolling, by which the carbonate is separated from the sheets of lead on which it is formed, continues to be executed dry. This is a very dangerous operation, because the workmen must inhale a great deal of the fine dust of the carbonate. In a white-lead manufactory which formerly existed at Portobello, the process was entirely performed under water or with damping; and to this precaution in a great measure was imputed the improvement effected by the proprietor in the health of the workmen, and their superior immunity from disease over those of Hull and other places, where the same precaution was not taken at that time. The only operation latterly considered dangerous at the Portobello works was the emptying of the drying stove, and the packing of the white lead in barrels; and the dust diffused in that process was kept down as much as possible by the floor being maintained constantly damp. By these precautions, by making the workmen wash their hands and faces before leaving the works for their meals, and by administering a brisk dose of castor oil on the first appearance of any complaint of the stomach or bowels, the manufacturer succeeded in extirpating colica pictonum entirely for several years.—This trade continues to be a very pernicious one in France; for no fewer than 266 cases of colic were admitted into the Parisian hospitals in 1841 from the white-lead manufactories in and near the capital. Yet facts are not wanting there to prove that with proper care the disease may be all but extirpated. A French manufacturer, whose workmen at one time suffered severely, had no case of colic among them for nine years after breaking them in to the observance of due precautions.[[1378]] Another says, from his own experience and information obtained at other works, he is satisfied the risk is very much greater among the intemperate than among sober workmen.[[1379]]
CHAPTER XIX.
OF POISONING WITH BARYTA.
Baryta and its salts, the last genus of the metallic irritants which requires particular notice, are commonly arranged among earthy substances, but on account of their chemical and physiological properties, may be correctly considered in the present place. These poisons are worthy of notice, because they are not only energetic, but likewise easily procured, so that they may be more extensively used, when more generally known.