32 MORTALITY OF SEDENTARY OCCUPATIONS. 



should expect each class, in a nearly equal degree, to suffer from 

 the same maladies. 



The results of a perfectly independent inquiry into the case of 

 of each class, remarkably corroborate this anticipation, as you may 

 readily satisfy yourselves from the appended tables. 



The tailors and needle-women, you will observe, have each 

 nineteen deaths from consumption per hundred sick. The shoe- 

 makers fall short of that number only by a fraction, being 18'7. 



Under the head of 



THE EFFECTS OF DUST FROM POISONOUS METALS 



are included workers in phosphorus, in mercury or quick- 

 silver, and in arsenic. Lucifer match-making is the sole occu- 

 pation which exposes those who work at it to the action of 

 phosphorus fumes. The inhalation of phosphorus vapours is 

 productive of a frightful disease, namely, death of the jaw bone, 

 necessitating its removal by a severe operation. 



The prevalence of this disease led, some years ago, to an inquiry 

 into its cause, with the result, that a different kind of phosphorus 

 (amorphous), unaccompanied by these effects, was substituted. 



The average life of the lucifer match-maker was formerly as 

 low as forty-four years. Work people much employed in the use 

 of mercury or quicksilver in the arts, are liable to a peculiar kind of 

 paralysis, with salivation, tremors (called "trembles" by the work- 

 people), and stammering. Chief among those affected in that class 

 are the water-gilders, when an amalgam of gold and mercury is 

 used. This process is now happily superseded by electro-plating ; 

 while, at the same time, recent improvements in looking-glass 

 making, further permit that branch of the art to be carried on 

 with comparative immunity. 



The leading sufferers from mercury are now those who work in 

 the quicksilver mines. 



Mercury, although a ponderous metal, is, nevertheless, volatile 

 at ordinary temperatures. Every fourth man accustomed to in- 

 hale its fumes dies consumptive, and the average life of the quick- 

 silver miner is forty-seven years. 



Arsenic, besides being an invaluable medicine in the hands of 



