Mortality from respiratory diseases in dusty trades (inorganic dusts) / by Frederick L. Hoffman.

  • Hoffman, Frederick L. (Frederick Ludwig), 1865-1946.
Date:
[1918]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mortality from respiratory diseases in dusty trades (inorganic dusts) / by Frederick L. Hoffman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/470 (page 16)
    duces vitality and predisposes to respiratory and tuberculous diseases^ but chiefly tuberculosis of the lungs.^ THE INFECTIOUSNESS OF TUBERCULOSIS. As early as 1881-82, when the infectiousness of tuberculosis had just been determined by the discovery of the bacillus of the disease by Koch, Dr. Arthur Kansome, in an address before the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association pointed out that—• Wherever people are collected together, the death rate from con¬ sumption is in direct proportion to the degree of crowding together, and to the deficiency of ventilation. I will give only one instance of this, that was first remarked by Dr. Guy, with reference to letter- press printers. He found that of 104 compositors who worked in rooms of less than 500 cubic feet for each person 12.5 per cent had had spitting of blood; of 115 in rooms of from 500 to 600 cubic feet, 4.35 per cent showed this sign of consumption; and in 100 who worked in rooms of more than 600 feet in capacity, less than 2 per cent had spat blood.^ LUNG INJURY FROM IRRITATING DUSTS. The same author, in an address on the “ Prevention of consump¬ tion,” delivered on September 22, 1887, before the Sanitary Congress at Bolton, directed attention to the relation of the inhalation of irritating substances, or dusts, arising from various kinds of indus¬ trial activities, such as steel grinding, glass cutting, brush making, etc., to the relative frequency of the disease, and he amplified his observations by quotations from the medical reports made by Dr. Headlam Greenhow to the Privy Council in 1860 and 1861, in which attention was called to the large mortality from tuber¬ culous complaints among “ those who worked in an atmosphere im¬ pregnated with dust consisting of fine particles of metal or of sand¬ stone, etc.” Granting that no statistical evidence can materially aid in disclosing the immediate causative factors of the disease, Kan¬ some obseTves that— No one, indeed, who has studied the vital statistics of these occu¬ pations, or who has medically attended the workpeople, can doubt 1 P.andelier and Roepke, in their treatise on A Clinical System of Tuberculosis (Lon¬ don, 1913, pp. 14, 15), mention among the acquired predisposing Influences favorable to the disease “ slight injuries to the smallest bronchial tubes from the inhalation of par¬ ticles of mineral, metallic, vegetable, or animal dust.” They add thereto that ” the harder, sharper, more pointed the dust particles, the more likely are they to injure the lung tissue, to open the way to tubercle bacilli, and to favor their development by setting up chronic inflammation. Likewise some substances, as corrosive vapors and gases, cause chemical injuries.” They conclude that: “As anatomical lesions may be caused by various fine mechanical Irritants, so gross traumatic Injuries from direct or indirect violence (punctures, shots, blows, falls, and crushing) produce injury to the lung tissue and favor possible infections. But much more frequently it will happen that a latent inactive focus, usually in the bronchial glands, is brought into activity by an injury, or a latent but active tuberculosis made evident, which, however, is the same thing from the legal point of view.” 2 A Campaign Against Consumption, l^y Arthur Ransome, M. D., London, 1915, p. 9.