On the diseases prevalent among potters / by J.T. Arlidge.

  • Arlidge, J. T. (John Thomas), 1822-1899.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases prevalent among potters / by J.T. Arlidge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    9/12 (page 9)
    employed in pottery work, is explicable from the fact that the ma- jority of such women are derived from the ill and under-fed class of milliners, seamstresses, and housewives of poor or dissipated men, or widows in great poverty. The next variety of bodily disorders enumerated in the tables is lead-poisoning. It will be seen that this happens only among potters, and the inference—the true one—at once forces itself upon the mind, that it must be due to some condition connected with their labour. This condition is found in the glaze used in giving the smooth, lasting surface to earthenware and china ; and, to a small degree, in some other processes in which lead colours are used, the chief of which is what is termed “ground-laying.” The men who use the glaze are called “dippers,” because their work is to dip the ware in the fluid glaze. Their hands and wrists are, during their work, constantly wetted with the lead glaze, and their clothes and faces become more or less bespattered with it. The extent to which they suffer is largely dependent on their own care and cleanliness, but to a certain degree also upon personal proclivity to suffer ; for it seems certain that the lead enters and affects the system much more in some workers than in others. One or more helpefs, women or lads, are engaged by the dipper in taking the ware from him, and in wiping off superfluous glaze. Those likewise into whose hands the glazed ware comes,—the “ glost placers ”—are also frequently poi- soned by the lead. The poison acts variously in different people and at different times. It occasions colic, troublesome dyspepsia, cerebral derangement, and paralysis in many forms, and to a greater or less extent. This source of sickness must be regarded as, both absolutely and relatively, a preventible one. It is for chemists, in conjunction with practical potters, to discover another mode of glazing pottery, and it is in the power of the workers themselves largely to obviate the peril of their labour. It would not be correct to represent non-potters as entirely exempt from lead-poisoning, for such among them as use the metal in a form capable of entering the system by absorption must necessarily be liable to it; as are, for instance, house-painters ; but probably no members of a craft suffer in so large a proportion from it as do potters, except it be the men engaged in the manufacture of white lead. But few remarks are needed to bring to a conclusion this retrospect of the diseases included in the tables. Both epilepsy and chorea are unusually prevalent in the popula- tion of the Staffordshire potteries. The pathology and etiology of epilepsy are obscure, and the cause of its frequent occurrence in the district in question cannot be satisfactorily accounted for. It is met with in early life, and often is consecutive upon infantile convul- sions. These last we can frequently associate with the ill-feeding of infants, and with faulty constitution. Both bad feeding and bad con- stitutions are common among the inhabitants. Struma, in various forms, affects a considerable proportion; retarded and imperfect