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Analysis Of A Correspondence On Some Of The Causes Or Antecedents Of Consumption

From: Fourth Annual Report Of The State Board Of Health Of Massachusetts
Creator: Henry I. Bowditch (author)
Date: January 1873
Publisher: Wright & Potter, Boston
Source: State Library of Massachusetts

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291  

Wakefield. -- Overwork in trades might cause consumption, especially in an improperly ventilated room.

292  

Hammond. -- Overwork, by debilitating the system, tends to cause the disease.

293  

Jordan. -- No doubt the excessive efforts of young men and women to get an honest living, confined in small, unventilated workshops, has a great tendency to cause consumption.

294  

Ballou. -- Yes, from dust.

295  

Plimpton. -- Close confinement and dust will develop an hereditary taint.

296  

ELEVENTH QUESTION.

297  

IS CONSUMPTION EVER CAUSED BY CERTAIN TRADES?

298  

The table runs thus: --

299  

Yes. No. Doubtful. No answer. Totals.
From Massachusetts, 102 7 7 27 143
From elsewhere, 56 2 2 7 67
158 9 9 34 210

300  

In answering this question, also, the affirmative seems to predominate very much. For example, we have one hundred and fifty-eight correspondents (75.24 per cent.) out of the two hundred and ten who believe that certain trades cause consumption, while nine (4.28 per cent.) say "nay"; and those who are doubtful are the same in number, while the number of those who do not reply is thirty-four (16.19 per cent.) . The answer, of course, only gives the fact that, of the profession, 75.24 per cent, of our correspondents believe that certain trades cause or promote consumption. For the special trades which, in the opinions of the same correspondents, produce the effect, we refer to letters.

301  

Extracts from Correspondents' letters on this question.

302  

Workman. -- In Iron-workers.

303  

Greene. -- Shoemaking and factory-life.

304  

Brown. -- Shoemakers who work in overheated and ill- ventilated shops are especially liable to consumption. The dust-laden air of cabinet-makers' shops seems to excite the disease in those predisposed. Workmen here consider dust of black walnut particularly irritating.

305  

Dickson. -- "Wood-turning, dry-grinding in scythe-shops, etc.

306  

Belden. -- Such as cause the workmen to inhale irritating substances.

307  

Hathaway. -- Workers in tin, etc.

308  

Smith. -- Close confinement in mills, ill-located and ill-ventilated boarding-houses, poor food, and cotton-dust.

309  

Spofford. -- Several have left trades that others do well in. A shoemaker died suddenly at seventy-six, another is living at eighty-five -- close workers -- on the bench forty and fifty-five years.

310  

Calkins. -- Especially stone-cutters and grinders of metals.

311  

Smith. -- Where they are confined to dusty rooms.

312  

Burr. -- Operatives in cotton-mills especially liable to it.

313  

Stone. -- Manufacturing shoes, sail-making, etc.

314  

Hills. -- Working in palm-leaf.

315  

Dwight. -- Polishing-rooms.

316  

Breed. -- All those trades which compel to a constrained position, prevent- ing free expansion of the chest, and also those where, from the character of the material wrought, the air is filled with particles of organic or mineral materials.

317  

Rice. -- I have known consumption either engendered!, or early developed, in grinders and polishers of iron and steel. A polisher, in this section, hardly ever lives more than four years, and almost invariably he dies of consumption. Cannot there be some invention for delivering the polishers from the emery wheel, so that only a section of the wheel shall he in the room where he stands, leaving all the works and flying particles of steel in another room; or some protector to wear on the face?

318  

Shay. -- I have no doubt that some parts of pianoforte making and cabinet-making prove exciting causes, by the large amount of fine dust necessarily inhaled while veneering and sand-papering the dry surfaces before polishing.

319  

Wilcox. -- Have seen it developed in millstone cutters and grinders of iron and steel, but consider it only secondary to inflammation and ulceration of the bronchi.

320  

Goodenough. -- Shoemakers.

321  

Priest. -- Cabinet dust is injurious; sewing-machines.

322  

Holbrook. -- I occasionally see here what is called, in popular language, " grinders' consumption." The main employment of the inhabitants of this village is that of making axes, hatchets, etc. A part of this work is done over the grindstones and polishing-wheels. The air of the rooms constantly contains the insoluble particles of stone and emery. These particles, in the process of respiration, settle in the lower bronchial tubes, and gradually fill the smaller ones completely, until the lungs assume almost the appearance of the liver, and are almost impervious to air. This condition causes a loss of strength and an inability for much exertion, from shortness of breath, which usually ends in the death of the victim in eight to ten years in the case of grinders, and in twelve to sixteen years in the case of polishers. Death often comes sooner from pneumonia and bronchitis, to which this sort of lung is peculiarly susceptible. Medicines are of but little use in grinders' consumption. Many of the persons having this disease return to Canada -- whence all the grinders and polishers come -- as soon as they begin to find themselves unable to perform their accustomed amount of labor; therefore the fatal cases seen here are much less in number than if the operatives were native-born.

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