ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CONTAGION. 259 



pit of water to soften then], which is often used two or three times, that is, for two or 

 three parcels, before it is changed, until the stench is intolerable. After this process the 

 skins are struck out over a beam, and hung up, side by side, as close as possible, in a 

 small room excluded from external air, which we term a stove: in this state they remain 

 until they heat and slime, so that we can pull off the wool. The process of putrefaction 

 is here so rapid as to disengage large quantities of volatile ammoniac, affecting the eyes 

 of strangers with tears, and their noses with the most offensive smell. Our men always 

 pull the skins in the stove in cold weather from preference, and are occupied in it a 

 whole day at a time without injury.' Another gentleman, a brother of Mr. Newman's, 

 concerned in the leather-dressing trade, but not in the same house, in Bermondsey, in- 

 forms him, ' that so far from our workmen being unhealthy, or particularly subject to 

 fevers, the reverse is the fact — the men employed look generally robust and healthy. In 

 a concern in this line of business of fifty years standing, in which fifty men are constantly 

 employed, the men have been uniformly healthy ; and in this a circumstance is deserving 

 of notice, viz. the men who work upon the raw skins, from which there is a constant and 

 profuse exhalation of putrid steams, and those employed at the lime and tan-pits are 

 equally healthy.' Mr. Newman, the writer of the above, says there are about sixty 

 leather-dressers' and tanners* yards in Bermondsey, and in them about seven hundred men 

 are constantly employed. 



" It may, perhaps, be objected to this account, that the business of leather-dressers, 

 in other countries, had been represented as extremely unhealthy. Hippocrates is sup- 

 posed to have meant something of this kind as the cause, when he mentions the case of a 

 person, Philiscus, residing near the wall, who died on the 6th day of a malignant fever; 

 (Epidemic, lib. 1. s. 3.;) for anciently, and now, indeed, offensive trades of this kind 

 were carried on in the suburbs, »aga to t«^o« of cities. This was .the case at Rome, be- 

 yond the Tiber, and some of the Latin poets have exercised their wit in allusions to it. 

 It is highly probable, however, that the real cause naturally existed in the spot itself set 

 apart for the ' sordidiores artes,' and that what was attributed to them proceeded from the 

 marshy nature of the soil. Certain it is, without recurring to this explanation, we cannot 

 reconcile Mr. Bevington's and Mr. Newman's, two respectable living witnesses, with the 

 testimony of Ramazzini and Mercurialis, Martial and Juvenal, as quoted by him ; and there 

 is sufficient evidence that the Transtiberina Regio of Rome, and the Paduano (once, 17th 

 century, male sanus, bestiis quam hominibus aptior) were proverbially unhealthy from 

 their marshes, and that Bermondsey is not. See Ramazzini, Be Jlorb. Artific. cap. 



