The erysipelas, or St. Anthony’s fire, is a disease very incident to the laborious. It is occasioned by whatever gives a sudden check to the perspiration, as drinking cold water when the body is warm, wet feet, keeping on wet clothes, sitting or lying on the damp ground, &c. It is impossible for those who labour without doors always to guard against these inconveniences; but it is known from experience, that their ill consequences might often be prevented by proper care.
The iliac passion, the cholic, and other complaints of the bowels, are often occasioned by the same causes as the erysipelas; but they may likewise proceed from flatulent and indigestible food. Labourers generally eat unfermented bread, made of peas, beans, rye, and other windy ingredients. They also devour great quantities of unripe fruits, baked, stewed, or raw, with various kinds of roots and herbs, upon which they often drink sour milk, stale small beer, or the like. Such a mixture cannot fail to fill the bowels with wind, and occasion diseases of those parts.
Inflammations, whitloes, and other diseases of the extremities, are likewise common among those who labour without doors. These diseases are often attributed to venom, or some kind of poison; but they generally proceed either from sudden heat after cold, or the contrary. When labourers, milk-maids, &c. come from the field, cold or wet, they run to the fire, and often plunge their hands in warm water, by which means the blood and other humours in those parts are suddenly expanded, and, the vessels not yielding so quickly, a strangulation happens, and an inflammation or a mortification ensues.
When such persons come home cold, they ought to keep at a distance from the fire for some time, to wash their hands in cold water, and to rub them well with a dry cloth. It sometimes happens, that people are so benumbed with cold, as to be quite deprived of the use of their limbs. In this case, the only remedy is to rub the parts affected with snow, or, where it cannot be had, with cold water. If they be held near the fire, or plunged into warm water, a mortification will generally ensue.
Labourers in the hot season are apt to lie down, and sleep in the sun. This practice is so dangerous, that they often wake in a burning fever. These ardent fevers, which prove so fatal about the end of summer and beginning of autumn, are frequently occasioned by this means. When labourers leave off work, which they ought always to do during the heat of the day, they should go home, or, at least, get under some cover, where they may repose themselves in safety.
Many people follow their employments in the fields from morning till night, without eating any thing. This cannot fail to hurt their health. However homely their fare be, they ought to have it at regular times; and the harder they work, the more frequently they should eat. If the humours be not frequently replenished with fresh nourishment, they soon become putrid, and produce fevers of the very worst kind.
Many peasants are extremely careless with respect to what they eat or drink, and often, through mere indolence, use unwholesome food, when they might for the same expence have that which is wholesome. In some parts of Britain, the peasants are too careless even to take the trouble of dressing their own victuals. Such people would live upon one meal a day in indolence, rather than labour, though it were to procure them the greatest affluence.
Fevers of a very bad kind are often occasioned among labourers by poor living. When the body is not sufficiently nourished, the humours become vitiated, and the solids weak; from whence the most fatal consequences ensue. Poor living is likewise productive of many of those cutaneous diseases so frequent among the lower class of people. It is remarkable that cattle, when pinched in their food, are generally affected with diseases of the skin, which seldom fail to disappear, when they are put upon a good pasture. This shews how much a good state of the humours depends upon a sufficient quantity of proper nourishment.
Poverty not only occasions, but aggravates, many of the diseases of the laborious. Few of them have much foresight; and, if they had, it is seldom in their power to save any thing. They are glad to make a shift to live from day to day; and, when any disease overtakes them, they are miserable indeed. Here the godlike virtue of charity ought always to exert itself. To relieve the industrious poor in distress, is surely the most exalted act of religion and humanity. They alone, who are witnesses of those scenes of calamity, can form a notion of what numbers perish in diseases, for want of proper assistance, and even for want of the necessaries of life.
Labourers are often hurt by a foolish emulation, which prompts them to vie with one another, till they overheat themselves to such a degree as to occasion a fever, or even to drop down dead. Such as wantonly throw away their lives in this manner, deserve to be looked upon in no better light than self-murderers.