216 Original Articles. [April, 



ON THE HEALTH OF METAL MINEES. 



By E. Angus Smith, Ph.D., F.R.S. 



Is it, after all, wonderful that a Royal Commission should inquire if 

 the condition of miners is satisfactory ? It seems to us that history is 

 full of their sorrows. 



When great armies stood before each other in ancient times, it was 

 often to answer this serious question, " Which of us shall live in ease 

 and abundance, and which shall die in the worst of bondage working 

 in the mines?" The miners were always miserable, even if they lived 

 in Attica itself, and but a few miles from the Exchange where the mine- 

 shares were sold. 



In our own times the same is repeated, and Poland stands before 

 Russia to answer the question, " Shall we die in the mines ? " It was 

 surely by the forced labour of great masses that accumulated waste or 

 bings, greater than are known to be raised in modern time, have been 

 collected in Spain, and especially at Huelva. In all known places the 

 work of the mines was once distressing ; still a Commission may very 

 well inquire into the mode of cure, as all the evils seem capable of a 

 remedy. There has even been a period in modern history when the 

 work of the mines has risen to be enthusiastically admired, and this 

 spirit is not entirely gone from some districts. 



When forced labour ceased, the mines became less deadly, and men 

 who were not observant did not see that they still failed to reach a 

 fair standard of health. 



It is a curious thing that a population does not know, and can 

 scarcely be taught, when it is unhealthy. Twenty years ago it was 

 proved that the average age of all who died was, in some places in 

 England, less by half than in others, and yet few people know it even 

 now, but many are constantly boasting of the health of the very towns 

 that were then branded, and have not improved. 



The popular proof of the health of a given locality is frequently 

 the attainment of great age by some individual in that locality, as if 

 such a fact could prove either wholesomeness or unwholesomeness. 

 We can only see the influence on masses, and when the thousands 

 of figures necessary for the calculation are reduced to a few. Some 

 close observers and men of fine instincts are to be excepted. 



In the General Report on the labouring population, in 1842, by 

 Mr. Edwin Chadwick, C.B., it is said — " On examining the condition 

 of 1,033 men artisans (agricultural labourers), living and working in 

 the vicinity, it was found that their average age was forty years, and 

 that their average period of work then completed was twenty-five 

 years." Of 2,145 miners, the average age was thirty, and they worked 

 fifteen years. Of the mining population, one-third only had attained 

 fifty years of age ; of the non-mining, one-third had attained seventy 

 years. This was on the authority of Mr. R. Lanyon, surgeon, in 

 Cornwall. 



This book of Mr. Chadwick's began the public sanitary movement 

 which has not yet ceased. 



