Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlv. (1900), No. 1. 5 



manipulate and more perfectly fulfilling ordinary require- 

 ments than anything known before. The present tendency 

 in all foreign countries is more and more to make wares 

 on English lines and by English methods. In France and 

 Germany the manufacture of earthenware and bone china 

 is spreading, and in the United States no hard-paste 

 porcelain is manufactured at all, but plenty of earthen- 

 ware on English lines. 



Assuming, then, that lead compounds niust be used 

 in the preparation of English pottery glazes, what steps 

 can be taken to diminish the risks attending their use at 

 present? In order to arrive at sound conclusions on this 

 point we must first consider, exactly, what the risks are 

 that a pottery worker runs in dealing with glazes and 

 colours, seeing that these are the only substances he has 

 to handle which contain lead at all. There has long been 

 an idea current among pottery workers that the lead 

 compounds used, which are either carbonate, oxide, or 

 boro-silicate, were absorbed by the skin, so that a worker 

 engaged, say, in dipping the articles of pottery into the 

 glaze mixture must inevitably contract plumbism, because 

 his hands were continually being immersed in glaze. 

 Unfortunately this idea was reiterated in the famous report 

 of Professors Thorpe and Oliver, issued by the Home 

 Office. Unfortunately ! for two reasons ; first, because it 

 is held by the leading medical authorities to be quite 

 erroneous, and also because, so long as this notion was 

 prevalent, it was difficult to persuade a man to avoid the 

 dust of lead glazes when he supposed he was inevitably 

 absorbing the poison through the skin of his hands. 



The real source of danger has been proved conclusively 

 to lie in the taking in of lead-containing dust at the 

 mouth or nostrils. Once in contact with the mucus 

 membranes, white lead, or any similarly soluble compound, 



