STEEL, COPPER, AND LEAD. 25 



Take the following examples. The average duration of life 

 among the dry-grinders of forks is twenty-nine years ; of razor- 

 grinders, thirty-one years ; edge-tool grinders, thirty-two years ; 

 spring-knife and file-grinders, thirty-five years; and saw and 

 sickle-grinders, thirty-eight years. 



The cause of this excessive mortality will be apparent, if 

 you will now examine this table of figures. It shows that 

 in every hundred sick among the needle-makers, seventy are 

 consumptive ; and that among the file-makers, sixty-two in the 

 hundred are consumptive \ and, taking the steel-grinders all round, 

 rather over forty in the hundred are consumptive. 



It is a recognised fact that, in these particular branches, the 

 quantity of dust is not only excessive, but finely comminuted, and 

 the amount of injury inflicted by it, is, on that account greater. 

 The effects of metallic dust on the lungs are, in the first instance, 

 only mechanical, but afterwards, by their continued irritation of 

 the organs, ulceration is induced, which terminates in consumption. 

 The next group of workers, includes those who are exposed 

 to the action of copper-dust. It comprehends the lithographers, 

 moulders, engravers, &c. ; and it will be observed that, while 

 the hurtful effects of the inhaled dust of this metal are more 

 uniformly distributed over each class, consumption is here also, 

 as among the steel-grinders, the predominant disease. 



In every one hundred sick lithographers, one half nearly is 

 consumptive (48 '0). 



The moulders and watch-makers have each thirty-six, and the 

 engravers twenty- six cases of consumption per hundred. The 

 average duration of the life of the entire class is about forty-eight 

 years. 



Lead-miners, painters, plumbers, workers in white lead, and 

 occasionally compositors, and all who work with lead, are exposed 

 to the risk of poisoning by that metal. The symptoms generally 

 are those of some form of paralysis. 



The most frequent and best known of those kinds of paralysis 

 are lead-palsy, painters-colic, and wrist-drop. White-lead is that 

 form of the metal most generally used. It is the chief ingredient 

 in paint, and largely enters into the composition of enamel-colours, 



