pulverizing, for mixing mortar, for extracting stone, seven; for sugar
refining, for the making of sugar of starch, three; for spinning, two;
for turning, two; for optical glasses, two; for polishing steel, one;
for cleaning grain, for the preservation of provisions, three; for
perfumery, two: for soap-making, two; for bleaching, for making candles,
hats, and delf-ware, for ironfounding, for scouring ashes, six; total
63.
“There has been made besides on simple steam-boilers 33 reports, divided
among different trades in the following manner, viz:—
For printing and preparing of stuffs and woollens 12
Hat manufactories 7
Wax and tallow candle manufactories 3
The shops of mechanicians 2
Refining 2
Soap-making 2
Extraction of the colouring matter from dye-woods 2
Baths 2
Dyeing 1
“If we add these 33 reports to the 63 preceding, we have a total of 96
reports on steam-engines, or simple boilers. We join them together in
consequence of the identity of the inconveniences to which these
machines give rise. These inconveniences can only proceed from the
chance of explosion of compressed steam, or from the chance of fire, and
from the presence of smoke, which accompany the establishment of every
furnace, whatever may be its use. It is true, however, that among the
complaints or objections which have reached the council, several have
turned upon the noise and shaking occasioned by the steam-engines, a
shaking which is particularly felt in houses a little shut in, and
connected with the neighbouring houses. This occurred with the printing
presses, and some other mechanical applications of steam.
“But these results are altogether independent of the steam itself, are
inherent in the imperfection of the mechanism employed, and would be
produced with much greater intensity by substituting for steam a horse,
a fall of water, the action of the wind, or any other mechanical motor.
“If we consider the steam-engines and boilers with respect to the
explosions to which they may give birth, we see that no accident has
happened during the current year from a total or partial explosion of an
engine, and yet there is no complaint or opposition which is not swelled
by the fear of these dangers. If the accidents of this nature may with
justice, by their seriousness and sphere of action, provoke the fears of
the neighbours, the wise measures prescribed by the rules are of a
nature to render them impossible, when they are faithfully executed.
Thus, Monsieur le Prefect, the council have always vigorously insisted
on the maintenance of the precautions with which the law surrounds the
steam-engines, not only to shield the responsibility of your
administration, but also because they are persuaded that it is
impossible in the actual state of things to neglect these prescriptions
without exposing those who make use of steam-engines to eminent dangers.
“The true and the most serious inconvenience of steam-engines is the
smoke. It is against this that most of the well-founded complaints are
raised.
“This inconvenience is not only felt at the present moment, but it
excites, above all, apprehensions for the future.
“When we consider that in the single year 1839, there have been granted
82 authorizations for steam-engines, and that we are yet but at the
beginning of the applications of this mechanical agent,—when we follow
the increasing progression of petitions addressed to the administration,
we are not able to suppress a certain fear against the ulterior
invasions of the smoke from these establishments.
“The council have applied themselves for a long time to the solution of
this difficulty, which is met at every turn in the petitions addressed
to you, not only for steam-engines, but for all the trades in which
furnaces are employed.
“Various systems have been proposed: that which first presents itself is
the use of smoke-consuming furnaces, which appears in fact the most
rational and appropriate. Nevertheless, although it is very easy to
assign the theoretical conditions for complete combustion of coal, the
difficulties of application have not permitted this kind of furnace to
become general. Hitherto the smoke-consuming furnaces require great
precision in the execution, great regularity in the distribution of the
fuel,—things difficult to realize in ordinary labour. On the other hand,
the great excess of air necessary to obtain complete combustion often
diminishes the efficacy of the coal, and renders these furnaces more
expensive, in certain cases, than the ordinary furnaces, in spite of the
loss of fuel which the latter involve.
“The mechanical distributors to regulate the supply of fuel, and the
activity of the combustion, have been also proposed and employed with
success; but they are a considerable expense at the outset, and can be
but little adopted except in great concerns, and where there is a very
constant application of steam.
“It remains to modify the nature of the fuel; and it is this which the
council have generally done. They commonly prescribe the use of coke, or
some variety of prepared coal, which gives no smoke—leaving it however
to the proprietors to make use of whichever method suits them best,
whether smoke-consuming furnaces, mechanical distributors, or fuel which
yields no smoke.
“These regulations, Monsieur le Prefect, have been adopted in principle
by the “Conseil de Salubrité,” and are, in the majority of cases, the
condition to which they think it their duty to submit the authorizations
they have the honour to propose to you.
“Doubtless their rigorous application may cramp certain establishments.
The council are not ignorant that for some particular purposes the use
of coke presents great obstacles, considering the construction of the
furnaces; but the absence of smoke in the combustion of coal is not so
very difficult to obtain, as to shake the intimate conviction of the
council that this constriction will be but momentary, and that it will
end by turning to the profit of the manufacturer.
“The problem of which the council seek the solution, is able to be
resolved; it is so already in great part, but there yet remains one step
to arrive at the goal, and they will reach it by persevering in the
course they have adopted. In their efforts they have been sustained, we
repeat, by the conviction that they labour not only for the advantage of
the health and cleanliness of the capital, by seeking to guarantee its
inhabitants from the nuisance of smoke, but also for the advantage of
the manufacturer himself, by forcing him to a better employment of his
fuel, and by putting him into such a condition that he may be able to
select the localities which suit him, without being exposed to those
continual complaints, to those recriminations, often well-founded, which
have not always been foreseen, and which sometimes become the cause of
the greatest embarrassments to the manufacturing establishments.
“An important progress in the path we indicate was made in 1839, by the
contrivance of M. Beslay, a mechanician, for steam-boilers—a contrivance
which has been pointed out in several reports on this subject, and which
proposes to prevent explosions and avoid smoke by means of a general use
of coke. It is only to be regretted that it has not yet been able to be
applied to all the purposes for which steam-boilers are employed.”
The improvements introduced by the council into the different branches
of industry with which they have had to deal, and on which their reports
enter into details at once useful and interesting, are numerous. Thus
the refining of gold and silver, the factories for fulminating powder,
for gilding, for chemical products, for bitumen, for melting tallow, and
a mass of other trades, owe to them notable improvements, both in the
methods of fabrication, and in the conditions for public health and
safety under which they are to be carried on. The white-lead
manufactories have excited their earnest solicitude. It is known that
the workmen who labour in these places are subject to serious and
frequent maladies. In consulting the earlier labours of the council, we
see them unceasingly occupied with this question; but the frequency of
the accidents, and their seriousness, have more particularly attracted
their attention in these latter times, and have engaged them to compile
a set of instructions which set forth the best rules of health to be
observed in these manufactories. (The rules have already been quoted.)
Later, the council have anew examined deeply this branch of trade. They
have visited the manufactories of white-lead existing in the department
of the Seine; they have obtained the experience of other departments,
and they have shown the necessity of commissioning one of their members
to follow the results of the rules quoted above. They have required,
moreover, that the administration should furnish some statistics on the
state of workers in white-lead admitted into the hospital. The
administration has hastened to defer to this wish, and there is no doubt
that there will result a sensible improvement in the health of the
workmen.
(After giving several other minor instances of the labours of the
Conseil, the report thus concludes:—)
And now that we have detailed the principal labours of the council, it
would be a necessary supplement to this article to show the results that
have followed from them,—the reforms they have introduced into the
public service. But here we are no more dealing with the labours of the
council, but with the labours of the administration. Thus independently
of the decisions on classed establishments, and which amount to about
300 a-year, it would be necessary to describe the measures for the
public health executed by the administration. But to confine ourselves
only to acts which interest the generality of the citizens, we may cite
the ordinances of police which relate to coloured sugar-plums; to horses
attacked with the glanders, or contagious maladies; to vessels and
utensils of copper; to the adulteration of salt; to the aid to be given
to the drowned and asphyxied; to the depôts for refuse in the rural
communes; to the dissection, modelling, and embalming of corpses; to the
cleaning of wells and waste-water wells; to the adulteration and sale of
fulminating powder; to the classification of new trades, the
amphitheatres of anatomy, the establishments of pork-butchers, &c. &c.
Certainly there are few institutions that can show such results; there
are few that receive an impulse so enlightened and constant. Bound in an
intimate manner with the administration of which they form part, the
“Conseil de Salubrité” has at all times, found in it a just appreciator
of their labours. They know the credit accorded to their reports, and
the duties imposed on them by a confidence so honourable for the
administration that gives it, and so justly merited by the body that
receives it.
16.—_Qualifications of Officers of Public Health: Statement by_ M.
DUCHÂTELET.
It is generally thought in the world that the medical knowledge acquired
in the schools is all that is necessary to become a useful member of the
council. The greater part of medical men themselves share this opinion;
and on the strength of some precepts which they have collected from
books on health and professions, they think themselves sufficiently
instructed to decide on the instant the gravest questions, which can
only be resolved by special studies.
A man may have exhausted medical literature; he may be an excellent
practician at the sick-bed, a learned physician, a clever and eloquent
professor; but all these acquirements, taken in themselves, are nearly
useless in a Conseil de Salubrité like that of Paris; and if an occasion
presents itself to make use of them, a very small number of persons
suffice to apply them. To be really useful in the council, it is
necessary to have an extended knowledge of natural philosophy, of the
constitution of the soil on which Paris stands, and of the geology of
neighbouring countries; it is necessary, above all, to know with
exactness the action which trades may have on the health of those who
exercise them, and the much more important action of manufactories of
every species on plants, on men congregated in towns, and on animals.
This knowledge, so important, of the action of manufactories and trades,
is not to be acquired by ordinary study, or in the silence of the
cabinet. It is not to be obtained without positive notions on the arts,
and on the greater part of the processes peculiar to each trade. It
requires habit and the frequenting of the places of work. In this
particular, more even than with medicine, books are not a substitute for
practice; and if there exist works on the subject, they are more likely
to mislead than enlighten.
From what has been said, the necessity will be evident to introduce into
the council those physicians who have made health, and particularly the
public health, a special study; and to join with them chemists, and,
above all, manufacturing chemists, because what would many of those
persons, whose life has been passed in hospitals and the exclusive study
of medicine, be before a steam engine? It is clear that they would often
be deceived by those adroit and skilful manufacturers who would have an
interest in concealing the truth.
17.—_Instance by_ MM. DUCHÂTELET _and_ D’ARCET _of the erroneous Medical
Inferences as to the insalubrity of particular Trades_.
Ramazzini is, as far as we know, the first who has treated professedly
of the maladies produced by the fumes of tobacco. In his great work, _De
Morbis Artificum_, he states that the workmen employed in the
manufacture of tobacco are seized with great pains in the head, with
vertigo, nausea, and perpetual sneezing; and that so great is the
subtilty of this substance, that all the neighbourhood, particularly in
summer, experience nausea. He adds, that those who work on tobacco lose
their appetite, and that their breath is insupportable.
Fourcroy, after repeating in his translation of Ramazzini all the
passages from this author, adds, in a note, several observations to
prove the dangers of tobacco; such as, that a lady died from a cancer in
the nose in consequence of taking too much snuff; another from a polypus
in the œsophagus, which prevented her swallowing; another from frightful
convulsions produced by sleeping in a room in which tobacco had been
rasped. Fourcroy states, however, that there are some privileged persons
who become accustomed to the action of tobacco, and experience no
inconvenience from it.
Cadet-Gassicourt, in a memoir addressed to the prefect of police on the
maladies incident to the trades carried on in Paris, says that the
workmen occupied in the preparation of tobacco are subject to vomitings,
colics, and acute and chronic affections of the chest; that they have
often vertigo, bloody fluxes, and are addicted to drink.
Tourtelle, in his _Elémens d’Hygiène_, affirms that it is very dangerous
to sleep in warehouses of tobacco; and he quotes a case, mentioned by
Buchoz, of a young girl of five, who died in a short time from dreadful
vomitings, occasioned by this sole cause.
Percy, in the article _Chapeau_, in the _Dictionnaire des Sciences
Médicales_, mentions, that some soldiers, exercising in the
_Champ-de-Mars_ in very warm weather, were overcome by syncope, which he
attributes to some tobacco that these men had put in their caps.
In a new edition of Ramazzini and Fourcroy, by Patissier, we find the
opinions of these authors without observation or comment. The editor is
content to add, that those who have to do with tobacco are, in general,
wasted, discoloured, yellow, and asthmatical.
Finally, Merat, in the article _Tabac_, in the _Dictionnaire des
Sciences Médicales_, says, that men engaged in the preparation of this
substance are wasted, discoloured, yellow, asthmatic, subject to colic,
diarrhœa, the bloody flux, but, above all, to vertigo, cephalalgia,
muscular tremor, to true narcotism, and to diseases, more or less acute,
of the chest. “All these assertions,” he continues, “are the fruit of my
observations in the hospitals of Paris. Tobacco causes not only evils
without number, but even death to those who prepare it. It deranges the
memory of all who inhale it, and renders it less clear and entire; it
weakens the tissues, especially the nervous tissues; it causes trembling
of the limbs; diminishes strength; it produces emaciation, and even
consumption, particularly among females; and sometimes begets entire
imbecility.”
“We might multiply these quotations. The just celebrity of the authors
who have furnished them gives to their opinion a force which imposes
belief, and makes us reject every species of doubt. Let us recall,
however, the maxim of Descartes; let us cease to believe the words of a
master; let us dare to doubt for an instant, and, observing for
ourselves, let us learn to form an opinion, based on what our own senses
and judgment have taught us.”
Acting in this spirit, Parent Duchâtelet and D’Arcet carried on a minute
investigation, in a vast manufactory of tobacco at Paris, containing
1,054 workmen. Not content with the results afforded by a single
establishment, they directed questions to the nine other great
manufactories of tobacco which France contains, and the answers were
prepared by the physicians, surgeons, and officers of each establishment
in conjunction. “The observations,” say MM. Duchâtelet and D’Arcet,
“which compose this memoir, have been collected from a sum total of 4518
workmen. They appear to us so much the more valuable and conclusive,
that they have been made simultaneously in the most opposite parts of
France, by men who had not, and could not have, any connexion. There is
thus no possibility to suspect the influence of a preconceived opinion;
and if those to whom our inquiries were addressed are unanimous in their
replies, and if these replies agree with our own observations, we shall
be sure that we have arrived at the truth.”
The conclusions which followed from these widely extended researches
were—
1. That in the greater part of the factories there was never known an
example of an individual who could not accustom himself to the
emanations of tobacco, and that in the rare cases where it proved
injurious, it was always in a particular part of the process, which
merely obliged the workman to be transferred to another department of
the factory.
2. That all which has been said on the frequency of nausea, of
vomitings, of diarrhœa, of colic, and of haemorrhages, is pure
supposition. That it is so no less with respect to the headaches,
sneezings, loss of appetite, foulness of breath, acute and chronic
affections of the chest, cancers, and other similar diseases. What the
same authors say on the discolouration of the skin of the workmen
engaged in the preparation of tobacco, on the yellow hue of their
complexion, their leanness, and emaciation, proves that they have not
observed for themselves, or have only seen the exceptions to the rule,
or have not compared this class of people with other workmen of the same
town, who were engaged in occupations of a totally different kind.
3. That tobacco, far from producing, in those who prepare it, death and
narcotism, does not even influence their nervous system; and that
vertigo, syncope, muscular tremor, convulsions, and other like evils,
which have been charged against it, have never existed in the
manufactories, though the men sleep in the midst of the most subtil
preparations, or, at least, are not to be attributed to that cause.
4. Not only is the tobacco without any effect on the health during the
first years devoted to its preparation, it has not the least ill
consequences in more advanced life. Feebleness and great age, or causes
altogether accidental, have been the sole ground for dismissing the
workmen.
5. There are some professions which, without destroying health in an
evident manner, abridge life; but a great number of those who work on
tobacco reach, and even surpass, the ordinary limit of human existence.
6. It is proved by innumerable facts, that the manufactories of tobacco
are not in anywise injurious to the men, animals, or plants, which may
exist in their vicinity.
It thus turns out, upon examination, that this much maligned substance
is perfectly innocuous. “Yet what practitioner,” say MM. Parent
Duchâtelet and D’Arcet, “who had not had occasion to visit the workshops
and study their influence, would not be forced into belief by the
imposing authorities we have quoted above; who of them would hesitate to
regard as demonstrated opinions on which Ramazzini, Fourcroy, Cadet
Gassicourt, Tourtelle, Percy, Patissier, Merat and others are unanimous,
without a single person having uttered a contrary assertion? There are
found among these authorities two members of the Royal Academy of
Medicine, three members of the Academy of Sciences, two professors of
the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, one professor of the Faculty of
Medicine of Strasbourg, two chemists, and two celebrated physicians—one
French, the other Italian; in a word, six physicians and an apothecary,
who held, and still hold, the most eminent places in the learned world.
It is therefore evident that it is of the highest importance that trades
and professions should be investigated differently from what they have
hitherto been; and this importance daily increases, because of the
progress and extension of arts and manufactures.”
18.—_On the Habitations of the Lower Orders of Paris._
No. 1.
The labouring classes are obliged to live in houses almost always
dilapidated, insufficient, or unhealthy. Such is the lot of the poor man
in all countries: the force of circumstances, the hard law of necessity,
compel it. Yet, if it is impossible to remedy completely this state of
things, may we not approximate to it, by building houses for every grade
of the lower orders—not only of the honest poor, but of the debased and
depraved? It appears to me that these houses would have a double
advantage;—they would diminish the causes of public insalubrity, and
offer to the honest and economical workman the means to procure a
residence equal to his necessities, and capable of producing in him the
taste for retirement and domestic peace so favourable to morals. It is
especially in this last point of view that the amelioration of the
dwellings of the poor and laborious class is to be ranked among the
preservatives against vicious habits.
Rent being one of the most important and indispensable domestic
expenses, the father of a family, pressed by other wants of the first
necessity, naturally seeks the least costly habitation. Now, these
habitations exist only in certain quarters, and in certain streets of
those quarters: they are old, ruined, and filthy. The proprietors, in
order to tenant them, let the lodgings very low, and thus attract the
poorer families. If these lodgings were healthy, if they were sufficient
for all the members of the family, there would be no room for censure;
but they are foul, badly lighted, and neither air-tight nor water-tight.
They are small, and as parents and children live and sleep in the same
room, the overcrowding is both a cause of unhealthiness, and an offence
against good morals. Moreover, the bad state and filth of the passages,
privies, and sinks, give rise to infectious exhalations, which vitiate
the air of these humble abodes, and affect the health of their
inhabitants in a manner so much more mischievous that the greater part
of them work all the day in crowded and ill-ventilated shops.
It would be worthy of a wise administration to remedy this dangerous
complication. The task is doubtless difficult; but why not grapple with
it boldly, instead of allowing to subsist in Paris, without any effort
to destroy them, so many centres of infection which reduce to the level
of the lowest animals the unfortunate beings who seek in them a retreat
for the night.