390 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



It is a curious fact that butchers are almost exempt from consumption. 

 If we remember that their shops are airy and open, that they are abundantly 

 fed on animal food, and that from early morning they are rapidly driving about 

 in the open air, taking much exercise and living well, we shall be able to 

 understand the influences which prevent the access of chest affections. These 

 conditions of open-air exercise and high feeding are in fact antagonistic to 

 consumption. It must not be supposed that we are urging all threatened 

 consumptives to become butchers, but their mode of life might be imitated 

 with advantage. 



Dust is one of the commonest causes of lung mischief. In many cases it 

 is not the only exciting cause, but often it is the chief and most deadly of several 

 deleterious influences to which workmen are exposed. The mortality amongst 

 those employed in many dusty occupations is simply enormous. We are told few 

 men who enter certain rooms in cotton factories ever live to attain to the age of 

 thirty-eight. Out of twenty-seven men in a certain flax factory, twenty-three 

 had some form of chest disease. The noxious influence of varnishes, turpentine,, 

 and drying oils in developing consumption is well known. Chest affections are 

 by no means unfrequent among artisans who use solder, such for instance as- 

 tinmen, coppersmiths, and goldsmiths. Wood-turners, and those whose work neces- 

 sitates the use of sand-paper, are usually great sufferers. Many plans have been 

 devised for preventing the entrance of dust into the air-passages, and some are very 

 simple and worthy of adoption. The practice of wearing a respirator, or a veil 

 over the mouth and nostrils, with the growth of the beard and moustache, may be 

 sited as examples. The objection usually made to the respirator is the expense, 

 but one made of cork can be obtained from the chemist's for a shilling. The 

 midday meal should never be taken in the work-shop, and the hands should be 

 washed before going out to dinner. These may seem little matters, but only 

 those who have workmen for patients know how constantly they are neglected. In 

 dusty occupations the pores of the skin get blocked up by the dirt, and it then 

 ceases to perform its functions. Normally it acts as a direct purifier of the 

 blood, being associated with the kidneys and lungs in this office. 



Among the conditions favouring the development of chest disease, there are none 

 more certain than depressing passions, especially when profound or of continual 

 occurrence, and this perhaps is one of the causes of the greater prevalence of these 

 complaints in large towns, where bad habits and bad conduct are more common, 

 and are so frequently the cause of those bitter regrets which neither time nor 

 consolation can assuage. Some years ago there existed in Paris a nunnery of a 

 new foundation, which had not been able to obtain from the ecclesiastical authorities 

 anything but a temporary tolerance, on account of the severity of its rules. The 

 alimentary regimen of the inmates, although extremely severe, was still not beyond 

 the bounds of nature ; but the spirit of the rules of the nunnery, directing the mind 

 to the most terrible rather than to the consoling truths of religion, as well as com- 

 pelling the inmates to resign themselves in everything to the will of the abbess, 

 produced effects as sad as unexpected. These effects were the same in all. At the 

 end of two months' sojourn in this house, the menses became suppressed, and in a 



