Document pe26ooxVByjy95mDLVdKgRE7X

FILE NAME: Household Contact (HC) DATE: 1948 DOC#: HC064 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Book Excerpt - History of Factory and Mine Hygiene HISTORY OF FACTORY AND MINE HYGIENE By Ludwig Telaky, M. D. $4.50 dustrial hygienists, government d union officials, and students will find this thorough discussion of development of industrial hyne from antiquity to the present ' ah indispensable compendium nformation. 'oisons, dust, skin diseases, and cr occupational diseases are fully fe d . T h e growth of control sures, factory inspection and lation is traced in Germany, land, and the United States ipational mortality and mror- y statistics are g iv e p /io r a d of years. Methods of preiig occupational illness and ents, and problems o f health ar to certain industries are bed in special chapters. A s e p - H IS T O R Y OF Factory and Mine HTTTygien e L u d w ig T eleky, m .d . Columbia University Press NEW YORK : MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS 1948 l8 DEVELOPMENT OB' INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE direction forty years later. So it is the English legislation that we shall deal with first. Three publications-- one French, one English and one German-- show in some respects the tendencies of the new era in legislation and in hygienic-technical installations in factories. These publications may be discussed first. Ptissier, in his Trait des maladies des artisans d'apres Ramazzini (Treatise on the Diseases of Artisans, According to Ramazzini), Paris, 1822, has industrial hygiene much more in mind than his predecessors. For the control of industrial damages he recommends: 1. Prohibition of dangerous trades, or, if that is not pos sible, the exclusive use in them of criminals sentenced to death; 2. Diminution of dangers by substituting machines for hand work; 3. Installation of public baths; 4. If the complete prevention of injury is impossible, the aged and the ill persons should be cared for by mutual insurance. He also mentions the advice previously given by Gosse (Geneva) that, as protection against noxious gases, workers should wear over mouth and nose a sponge soaked in cer tain liquids, depending on the vapors against which they are to protect the wearer. He recommends for certain pur poses other respirators (which were constructed at the end of the 18th century by Pilatre de Rosier, Aulmayer, and others), but Ptissier adds that all such respirators are a nuisance for the worker and should not be used regularly. "We therefore have to look for simple and cheap devices which do not bother the working man and are independent of his volition." As such a device he recommends D'Arcet's "fourneau d'appel." D'Arcet, a tester in the Paris mint, saw three of his seven colleagues die from the effects of nitrous fumes. Seeking a means to draw off the vapors, he DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE 19 introduced the pipe of a special furnace into the chimney of the work shop, which by its heat caused a dilution of the air and so a draft strong enough to carry the fumes out with it. For his invention he won a prize of 3,000 Fr. placed by a manufacturer of gilded bronzes at the disposal of the Academie Royale des Sciences de France. Besides D 'Arcet's "fourneau d 'appel," Patissier recommended that gilders should wear impermeable gloves and working clothes, and that work clothes and street clothes should be stored in separate lockers. In accordance with the custom in Paris factories of this kind, mirror makers should cover mirrors only one day a week and do other work during the rest of the week. Patissier also speaks very extensively of the sewer workers, who are endangered by "mitte" (ammonia vapors), "plomb" (hydrogen bisulfid), and "gas azote" (lack of oxygen); he recommends various measures for their pro tection. His chapter on silk workers in Lyon is very inter esting; it describes manifold peculiarities, not caused by the work of these tradesmen who, like the " dames des halles" of Paris, are a special class of people in themselves. In summary, we may say that Patissier's book is the first to offer a modern outlook on industrial hygiene; his acute observations and remarks should be-- but are not always even today-- recognized by everyone. From the book by S. C. Turner Thackrah, The Effect of Arts, Trades and Professions and of Civic States and Habits of Living on Health and Longevity (2d ed., London, 1832), a few words may be quoted here to show the outlook of the author, worthwhile even today: " Masters, however en lightened and humane, are seldom aware, never fully aware of the injury to health and life which mills occasion. Ac quainted far less with physiology, than with political economy, their better feelings will be overcome by the opportunity of increasing profit." He describes how a "diminution of the intervals of work has been a gradual en-