THEATRE-HYGIENE. 523 



Change of dress during the progress of the evening is an 

 excellent one from ;i hygienic point of view. As a rule, an actor 

 generally manages two or three changes, each time feeling his body 

 refreshed and spirits revived. As regards dress material, we may 

 mention that cases have been reported where the colouring matter 

 of the stockings or ' tights,' has exerted certain deleterious in- 

 fluences on the subjacent skin ; such examples fortunately have 

 been so few and far between that th*e publicity given to them 

 when recognised will, it is to be hoped, prove a sutticient obstacle 

 to their recurrence in the future. Happily, the employment of 

 lead, mercury, bismuth, or zinc, in the manufacture of the various 

 cosmetics and paints requisite for histrionic portraiture is every 

 day becoming more and more obsolete. In London it wovild seem 

 to be under the authority conferred by Section 14, 6 and 7 Vict. 

 c. 68, that the Lord Chamberlain might regulate the dress of 

 performers. 



As to the question of smoking in theatres, the exigencies of 

 modern nature point to tlie early introduction of the f ragant weed 

 within the precincts of the jolay-house walls. We shall probably 

 soon hear of a non-smoking, in contradistinction to smoking 

 theatres. In making the suggestion that some sort of reform 

 might be met half way, it may be mentioned that at a London 

 theatre lately visited, one of the upper galleries was used as a 

 smoking-] ounge, and yet the evidence of tobacco-smell in the lower 

 portions of the buildings was inappreciable. It is only fair to 

 state, however, that the system of ventilation was complete, and 

 everything to be desired. Should the novelty of such a plan 

 produce too strong a revolution of feeling, we might well take 

 a lesson from certain of the continental theatres where two or 

 more evenings are specially set aside each week as smoking-nights. 

 On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the chief officers 

 of the London Fire Brigade are strongly opposed to smoking in 

 these places of amusement. 



Turning now to the question of dangers from fire, the terrible 

 disaster at the Ring Theatre in Vienna; at the Opera Comique in 

 Paris, and still more recently at the Exeter Theatre in England, 

 afford ample illustration of the dangers to which both audiences 

 and performers are, and assuredly will continue to be exposed, so 

 long as the system of reform in theatre-construction, supervision 

 and management is so outi'ageously neglected as it is at present. 

 The same causes, the same sequences of events which co-operated 

 in the wholesale destruction of so much life there, are precisely 

 similar to those which are liable any day to arise here. The 

 structural condition of the buildings was notoriously defective, 

 .the doors were kept obstructed, the staircases were badly construced, 

 and the exits far from adequate. Unfortunately the example set 

 before us in this respect by the central city of the whole civilised 

 world is even one to be avoided, not followed, for at the present 



