664. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We will begin with the poisonous dusts, taking first one of the 

 most murderous classes those of lead. Accidents due to lead are 

 liable to occur among many classes of operatives who work with this 

 substance either in a metallic state or in combination. Painters, min- 

 ers, plumbers, type-founders, compositors, and glass-makers are pecul- 

 iarly exposed to them. 



The most obvious precaution to be taken against the admission of 

 poisonous dusts with respired air is to arrest their passage by means 

 of a protective veil or mask. An insurmountable obstacle has pre- 

 vented the use of such a precaution. The workmen will not wear the 

 screens, although effective and convenient ones enough have been 

 made. Workers in white-lead ought also to wear special clothing for 

 their work ; but all that it has been possible to get them to do is to 

 cover their ordinary clothing with overalls. This does not give sum- . 

 cient security against the transportation of lead-dust by the clothes. 

 Other important measures are those which have regard to cleanliness ; 

 here, again, we are opposed by an obstinate resistance. In a shop at 

 Washington, near Newcastle, England, where the oxychloride of lead 

 is prepared, the workmen quit because of an effort to introduce baths 

 among them. They would not be shut up in a bath-room, although 

 they would bathe very readily in the open air or in swimming-ponds. 



A very essential precaution that workmen should always take is 

 never to deposit or eat their food in the shop, or allow it to be in any 

 way exposed to mixture with poisonous dusts. 



Attention has been directed toward finding an antidote to lead- 

 poisoning. M. Meisens, in 1843, recommended iodide of potassium, 

 and it has been used with excellent effect ; it cured declared diseases, 

 as, for instance, paralysis ; and permitted the continuance of work in 

 lead without danger from colic. The Academy of Sciences awarded 

 a prize for the discovery. Milk was recommended as a preventive of 

 lead-poisoning by M. Didier-Jean, director of the glass-factory at St. 

 Louis, near Sarreguemines, in 1867 ; but the workmen were not dis- 

 posed to use it, and found a way to bring alcoholic liquors to the shop 

 instead of milk. 



General hygienic measures against this source of danger include 

 the suppression of lead-dusts, that is the production of as little as pos- 

 sible of them, and the removal of them as soon as they are produced. 

 Moistening, grinding, and mixing under water, closed apparatus for 

 pulverizing, natural and artificial ventilation, substitution of machines 

 for the hand, and mechanical packing such are the improvements 

 adopted by the factories at Brussels and Lille, with great advantage 

 to the health of the workmen. Of two white-lead factories in Paris a 

 few years ago, one was very unhealthy, furnishing from two hundred 

 and fifty to two hundred and eighty patients a year to the hospitals ; 

 while the other, with the same number of men employed, was only 

 slightly unhealthy, and furnished only two or three patients a year, or 



