Thirty-eighth annual report [of the] Local Government Board. Supplement in continuation of the report of the Medical Officer of the Board for 1908-09, containing Reports and papers on the nature, uses and manufacture of ferro-silicon, with special reference to possible danger arising from its transport and storage / by S. Monckton Copeman, Samuel R. Bennett and H. Wilson Hake.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thirty-eighth annual report [of the] Local Government Board. Supplement in continuation of the report of the Medical Officer of the Board for 1908-09, containing Reports and papers on the nature, uses and manufacture of ferro-silicon, with special reference to possible danger arising from its transport and storage / by S. Monckton Copeman, Samuel R. Bennett and H. Wilson Hake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The authorities became seriously alarmed, and although the medical officer on board certified the deaths as due to pneumonia, the steamer and its passengers were quarantined on suspicion of the vessel being infected by plague. As the result of official enquiry at the time, the deaths were attributed to “ unknown causes,” but subsequent fuller enquiry resulted in the conclusion that the cause of the sickness and deaths of so many of the steer- age passengers was due to fumes given off by the cargo of ferro- silicon. In March, 1906, two young children aged respectively 4i years and 2\ years, died on the Rhine boat “ Caroline,” of Mannheim, the cargo of which, in addition to bales of paper, wine, and soap, consisted of 750 cwt. of electrically produced ferro-silicon, which was in course of transit from a manufactory in Switzerland to Essen. Of three cabins on the vessel the one occupied by these children and their parents was situated immediately over the hold in which the ferro-silicon was stored. In this cabin it had been found necessary to light the stoves, and as only an ordinary wooden deck separated the cabin from the cargo, it would seem probable that the lighted stove, by creating an up-draught had drawn gases from the hold into the cabin. Immediately after departure from Mannheim the children were attacked with giddi- ness, nausea, and actual vomiting, in consequence of which they were kept in bed. As they got worse rather than better a medical man was called in to see them on arrival at Duisberg, who attributed their illness to food-poisoning. On the following day the children both died, as also did a canary kept in a cage in the same cabin. The occurrence was investigated by P. Lehnkering,* of Duisberg, who states that he, at once, diag- nosed the causes of these fatalities. He adds that the parents of these children although spending most of the night on deck, in the open air, also suffered from headache and giddiness. In his paper Lehnkering also briefly refers to four other in- stances, coming under his observation, in which one or more deaths occurred on boats plying on the Rhine, and which in each instance, as the result of careful investigation, were found to have been caused by emanations from consignments of ferro- silicon among the cargo. On October 21st, 1905, Dr. J. F. Robertson, of Althorpe, was called to the Keadby canal to see two children aged three and four years respectively, who were lying ill on board a “ keel ” (canal boat), named the “ Emily.” Dr. Robertson states, in a letter to the British Medical Journel of May 15th, 1909, that on arrival he found one child was already dead, while the other was lying in an unconscious state covered with a cold, clammy sweat, the pulse being hardly perceptible, the breathing slow and light, * Phosphorwasserstoffvergiftung durch im electrischen ofen hergestelltes Ferro- Silicium, von P. Lehnkering (Duisberg). Zeitschr. f. Untersuchungd. Natur- u. Genussmittel. 12. Band. 15. Juli, 1906, pp. 132-135.