peculiarity or hereditary predisposition, or the various physical circumstances which have acted on the system during the years of growth, such causes might well be sufficient to produce or confirm pulmonary disease; but, otherwise, it may be doubted how far the use of the lungs in freest vocal exercise, after the age of puberty, can be otherwise than invigorating to the pulmonary tissues, and so far preventive of pulmonary cachexia.

The undue use of the eyes is a fertile source of evil to many classes of the children of labour. All who have to fix their eyes on minute objects, as engravers, compositors, watch-makers, embroiderers, painters; all who have to work much by artificial light, as dressmakers—particularly if much employed in sewing black articles,-students, and literary men ; all who have to expose the eyes to the influence of strong light, as workers at forges and furnaces,-are found to be peculiarly subject to disorders of the eyes, and defective vision, with much risk of eventual amaurosis, or loss of sight from paralysis of the optic nerve.

Those who work in damp places, as colliers, and miners generally, who usually, moreover, have to labour in a position that is nearly or absolutely horizontal, and perhaps with part of the body immersed in water during days or weeks at a time, are peculilarly liable to suffer injury from their employments. Those who work in rooms which are either very much heated, or subject to great vicissitudes of temperature, as glass-blowers, calico-printers, dyers, the operatives

EFFECT OF INHALATION OF DUST, ETC. 315

in certain factories, &c., are correspondingly liable to suffer from their employments; and more particularly, it is said, from disease of the liver. In the instance of bakers, there must be added to the deleterious influence of the heated ovens, that of the fearful consequences of so much night-work as is commonly required, and, moreover, the bad effects of inhaling so much dust as arises from the flour.

The mechanical effect of dust, when respired to a considerable extent, is seen in the liability of the grinders of cutlery, of stonemasons, &c., to pulmonary disease. Needle-makers, pin-makers, colliers, flax-dressers, and those who work in some of the branches of the cotton and worsted manufactures; also glass-cutters, file-makers, whitesmiths, and the artisans in many other departments of manufacture, are likewise more or less liable to suffer from the inhalation of the dust produced by their occupations. Dr. Favel says, that maltsters are very liable to chronic bronchitis, and eventual phthisis. Dr. Hastings writes, that the preparers of yellow leather, in the city of Worcester, and those employed there in some parts of the china manufacture, are often the subjects of severe attacks of pulmonary disease; the processes involving the inhalation of an atmosphere loaded with dust. "Dyspnoea is generally the primary symptom, which is often neglected for many months. If the occupation, under these circumstances, be continued, the disease is aggravated; the patient is not unfrequently seized with hemoptysis, which is occasionally very profuse, and which is accompanied with

It

a great increase of dyspnoea and severe cough.” is added, that such cases may die from true tubercular phthisis, or from inflammation, thickening, and ulceration of the bronchiæ and the air-cells. Grooms, and the men employed in breaking stones on the public roads, are believed to suffer likewise more or less from this cause. The miserable class of grinders, in the various processes of the manufacture of cutlery, is the most fearful and notorious instance of the injurious effects that may follow the exposure of the pulmonary mucous tissue to such direct sources of mechanical irritation. According to the able account of this form of pulmonary disease, for which we are indebted to Sir Arnold Knight, fully confirmed in all particulars as this account has since been by Dr. Calvert Holland, and the late Dr. Favel, the so-called "grinders' asthma" is a true tubercular cachexia, necessarily modified in its progress and symptoms by the causes which produce it. The symptoms of the cases, and the post mortem examinations, show much irritative inflammation, superinducing bronchitis, peripneumonia, hepatization, and tubercular degeneration; the latter becoming, in many cases, eventually extended to the kidneys, &c. The fatal result of this fearful occupation, appears to be more rapid in those branches of the business in which the grinding is performed on dry stones, less rapid when the operative has to use dry stones for some parts of his work, and wet stones for other parts, and still less rapid when wet stones are exclusively made use of. The dry grinding branch appears to destroy the life,

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at from 28 to 32 years of age; the mixed dry and wet grinding, at from 40 to 45 years of age, and the wet grinding at from 45 to 50 years of age (Sir Arnold Knight). Among the fork-grinders, out of 61 deaths, 44 were under 35 years of age, and one individual only had attained the age of 48: this is dry grinding. Among the scissor-grinders (mixed wet and dry grinding), of 102 deaths, 41 were under 36 years of age; in the four subsequent years (36 to 40), more than a fourth of the whole mortality occurred. Among the razor-grinders (wet and dry grinding), more than half the deaths occurred under 36 years; and three-fourths of the remaining deaths occurred between the ages of 36 and 45. The penknife grinders, the table-knife grinders, the file grinders, the saw grinders, and the scythe grinders, present varying rates of mortality, according to the probable degree of mechanical irritation of the pulmonary tissues: in the instance of the scythe grinders, of 20 deaths, 12 were found to have occurred between 46 and 60 years of age, and only 3 of the number had died under 41 years of age (Dr. Favel). It seems, that, in all these cases, the irritation is due to the inhalation of the minute particles detached in the grinding; and more injurious effects are attributed to the particles detached from the grinding stones, than to those from the steel; and, therefore, the ingenious apparatus invented by Mr. Abraham, consisting of a mask of magnetised iron, even if the reckless workmen would have taken the trouble to use it, would have been of comparatively little service,

as it could only have arrested the particles of iron ; and could only have been thus far useful, when a single grinding wheel was in use in an apartment, whereas several wheels, in use by as many men, are generally at work in the same room. A more useful, and much simpler contrivance, seems to be an open flue, on the side of the wheel opposite to that on which the workman is placed, through which a sufficient current of air is kept up, from within the building to the outside, by means of a fan, kept in motion by means of a strap connected with the revolving wheel. It is said, that, although the construction of such flues does not cost, on the average, more than £2 each, and although their effect on the atmosphere admits of the easiest demonstration, their use is by no means general. Sir Arnold Knight says, that "the men themselves will be at no trouble about their own health," and that he "almost believes they view any precaution to prolong life with jealousy, as a means for increasing the supply of labour and lowering wages."

I have selected this great instance, on account of the convincing evidence it affords of mechanical injury which may be inflicted on the lungs by the habitual inhalation of dust: a proof which is strengthened by the circumstance, that when the grinding-wheels were worked by water-power, and the workmen were subject to long interruptions of their work in times of frost or drought, and when the grinding part of the edge-tool manufacture was followed in connection with the other departments of the trade, the