SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
The individual’s health will depend mainly, apart from inherited 
conditions, upon the nature of his work, and the conditions under which 
itis performed, and on the conditions under which he lives domestically. 
The domestic conditions may be rendered hygienically desirable by 
education, and where that fails, by compulsion. 
The present remarks are concerned only with the conditions of 
daily work. 
Any well-conceived scheme of preventive medicine, as applied to 
industries of any sort, must be directed to the primary objective—that 
of keeping people in sound health. In order to accomplish this, it is 
necessary to know what conditions of ill-health exist. amongst those who 
earn their living in any form of industry, what ailments are special 
to any form of industry, and what preventive measures may be applied 
to avert the onset of these ailments. 
If preventive medicine can be applied in such a way that the cause 
of any particular form of ill-health can be discovered and removed, 
then “industrial hygiene ” will have ceased to be a mere catchword, and 
will have begun to be-a department of science having a real value to the 
community. It can easily be shown that in many directions the study 
of disease has revealed a cause, the removal of which, without economic 
loss to the employer of labour, has removed a large amount of disease, 
suffering, and ill-health. 
An interesting example of partial success and partial failure in this 
respect is that of the ill-health produced by the inhalation of aeroplane 
“dope.” In the earliest stages of the war, this “dope” contained a 
poison which gave rise to a toxic jaundice amongst those engaged in its 
manipulation and manufacture. In addition, numerous cases of less 
severe illness occurred. The manufacture of this particular “dope” 
was discontinued, and the characteristic illness at once ceased. ‘The 
authorities have, however, not yet succeeded in discovering an entirely 
harmless “dope,” those now in use producing headache, cough, and a 
serious anemia. The. precautionary measures in force have reduced this 
sickness to a minimum without entirely abolishing it. 
The very satisfactory results which lave been attained in past years 
in preventing fibrosis of the lungs arising from dust irritation, in pre- 
venting lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, and phosphorous poisoning 
in the respective trades in which these risks occurred, are striking 
examples of the benefits derived from the application of the system of 
scientific medical research, combined with application of the knowledge 
so acquired. 
It must be realized, however, that, hitherto, efforts to protect the 
health of industrial workers have been mainly based on the need for 
investigating or removing admitted evils as they arose, rather than on 
the actual results of systematic inquiry and research. Increasing 
attention has certainly been devoted in recent years to the critical 
examination of certain “dangerous trades,” but most trades are not 
“ dangerous,” and the vast bulk of industrial disease does not find its 
origin in the so-called “dangerous trades.” Yet there is considerable 
evidence that rates of sickness and mortality are materially affected by 
occupation. 
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