Diseases of occupation from the legislative, social, and medical points of view / by Thomas Oliver.

  • Oliver, Thomas, Sir, 1853-1942.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of occupation from the legislative, social, and medical points of view / by Thomas Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    flourishes in low, marshy lands, where organic matter is undergoing putrefaction in brackish water, in river valleys, in the salt grass Steppes of Siberia, and also on lands that are flooded in winter and are dry in summer. The bacillus grows best between a temperature of I2°C. (530 F.) and 40°C. (i04°F.). In countries where the winter is severe and the summer heat is excessive, as in the central plateau of Asia Minor, with its numerous salt and fresh water lakes, where roams the Angora goat on the plains and are herded innumerable flocks of sheep, there anthrax flourishes, and there, too, occurs the contamination of the hides and wool owing to the dirt and sand, which contain the spores of anthrax, becoming adherent to the fleeces and the long hair as these are trailed along the ground. That the soil and pasture become contaminated, can harbour the spores, and cause infection has been shown by placing the manes of animals that died from anthrax upon the fields and allowing healthy animals to graze thereon, or, as occurred in the case of two horses that consumed the grass in a field close to a woollen factory in Yorkshire, in 1901, and upon which had been blown dust from Persian wool that was being cleaned in the factory. Silberschmidt mentions outbreaks of the disease near Zurich, in which eight out of twenty-two animals became infected by dust blown from the chimney of a horse- hair factory {Zeitsch. f Hygien., vol. xx. p. 455). Legge, in his Milroy Lectures, alludes to other instances, and draws attention to the relationship of outbreaks of anthrax and the factory conditions prevailing at the time. Ravenhal, of Penn- sylvania, instituted an inquiry a few years ago into the part played by tanneries in spreading the disease among cattle fed upon pastures that were watered by streams contaminated by tannery refuse, and he found that there had died of anthrax sixty cattle which had been grazing near the tanneries. In factories a considerable quantity of dust is given off during the opening of the packages of wool, also during the sorting, blending, and cleansing of wool that has been neither washed nor disinfected. The long hair used for weaving purposes may have been previously soaked in warm soda solution ; but China mane hair and bristles are only subjected to a process