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who have given valuable help, and especially Messrs. E. A. R. Werner of Birmingham, and G. E. Duckering and W. Buchan of Liverpool, who have rendered much help. Thanks are also due to many authors and publishers, particularly the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office, for permission to reproduce numerous illustrations.

LIVERPOOL,

January, 1923.

INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

AND MEDICINE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION AND RETROSPECT

IN all ages certain physical and economic evils have been associated with labour and industry; early medical writersHippocrates and Galen, for example-have drawn attention to the dangers of occupations such as mining, and the injury and danger associated with trades such as lead-mining and smelting, pottery manufacture, and various textile processes.

Pliny states that in Roman times polishers wore respirators to protect themselves from inhaling the dust of red lead.

The unhealthy conditions of certain trades have therefore been recognized for centuries.

It is recorded that in medieval times many efforts were put forth to prevent dishonest trading, to arrange for a regulated supply of labour to prevent idleness, etc., but it is rarely found that any inspiration to improvement arose from the desire to render the life of the worker either safer or more healthy.

The relationship between dust inhalation and disease was early recognized. Such writers as Mutinensis and Ramlovius in the Middle Ages are quoted as referring to the subject. In 1557 Georgius Agricola published a work De re metallica," in which reference is made to the dust in mining industries producing asthma and leading to the development of consumption.

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The first medical work on the diseases of occupation was a monograph, "De morbis artificium diatriba," published

in Italy in 1700 by Ramazzini of Padua. In this work many of the dusty occupations of the present day are referred to, and the prevalence of phthisis in some of these trades is pointed out.

Whilst these early records are interesting, it was not until long afterwards that the real foundations of the modern methods of prevention of industrial disease were laid, which have been followed by such remarkable results.

In England, factory legislation was closely linked up in many of its initial stages with the movement for sanitary reform, which began with the Commission on the Poor Law about 1833. A brief survey of some of the earlier stages of this growth may be useful. Apart from the question of mediæval labour statutes which regulated the hours of the working day, it was the conditions under which children. were employed which first aroused the public conscience and led to measures designed for the protection of health being incorporated into Factory Acts.

The old Poor Law system in the time of Elizabeth (1601) arranged for the apprenticeship to masters of destitute children and orphans, to learn a trade, and it was also quite customary for charitably disposed persons to establish houses where children could be instructed in spinning and weaving; children were also frequently working at very early ages at home with their parents in the old hand loom weaving in cottages and cellars.

There is evidence that factories for the manufacture of woollen and linen fabrics, dyeing establishments, soap and sugar refineries were established in the sixteenth century in this country and on the Continent, but it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that the beginnings of the modern factory system were established.

About this period much poverty and distress were prevalent amongst the industrial population in England, and many cottagers were totally unable to support their families on their earnings, and amongst them endeavours were made to get every child to earn its own living by labour at an early age, in preference to begging and stealing.

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