The morning news., 1897-01-03

dilated and their frail walls broken down.
| Too little attention is paid to the effect
! which different kinds of dust have on the
! bodies of the men who breathe it in.
/ Weavers, fle-makers and cotton spinners
/ all have lungs which accumulate special
| kinds of substances until, if the germs of
! tuberculosis accidentally find entrance,
/ the hasty development of consumption in
its worst form is only a question of a few
months
An extremely odd form of poisoning
! from an occupation was noticed not long
ago in a felt hat factory in Orange, n. j..
/ When felt is being prepared mass of
hair and fur is taken and mixed up to-
( gether. To make the hbres adhere close
/ ly mercury is added. which makes the lit
/ tie ''hairlets" or ''fuzz" on the sides of
each individual hair stick out and catch
until, as a result when the mass is finally
heated and pressed the hair and fur ad-
here closely together and make a good
felt. Now when the heating takes place
the fumes of mercury are given out, which
any one who has ever read of the deadly
quicksilver mines of Siberia knows is
highly poisonous. But the people in the
Orange factory did not know this, and
after awhile the men all began to suffer
from sore mouths, trembling hands, para
lysis of their arms or legs and pains or
mental symptoms, which the doctors
promptly recognized as undoubtedly mer-
curry poisoning, though it was some time
before the cause was discovered.
Similar epidemics of mercury poisoning
have occurred from time to time among
makers of looking glasses, who use metal
! lie mercury to coat the backs of mirrors
makers OF thermometers and barometers
and in miners who use mercury to extract
gold from the rough ores.
Much less known is a peculiar kind of
poisoning among men who work in cop
per, brass or bronze.
This has been better known In France
than in this country. where they call the
disease "brasS founders ague" The
gradual absorption of copper produces the
most startling change in the color of the
skin and hair of these workmen. First
their boards turn green, then their eye
brows and eyelashes, then the skin on
their faces and hands, and finally almost
the entire body turns q distinct brilliant
shade of green. Authorities state that
when these men die their bones are found
partially turned to copper, with a dark
green color. and over their graves a de-
pOsit of coppery substance is frequently
observed. Observations in Durfort France
have recently brought to light many cases
of this sort.
Men who make gold letters" which are
copper or brass, rather tnan gold, nave sur
fered from forms of copper poisoning. g,
The factories where rubber goods are
made yield strange forms of poisoning,
which seem to be due to the presence of
carbon bisulphide, a chemical used in prep
araton of rubber goods. When rubber
was first introduced in the form of caout-
chouc it was far too soft to be used for
many purposes, and even rubber shoes
had to be about half an inch thick to keep
any shape at all. But since the process
of vulcanizing rubber has been introduced
rubber has been used as a substitute for
many other kinds of material in the arts.
whore a stiff, brittle substance is needed.
To vulcanize rubber, raw caoutchoue
and sulphur are heated together Carbon
bisulphde. one of the worst smelling
chemicals known to science, is formed.
which partly dissolves the rubber and
partly goes up in the air in the form of
gas. 1t is this gas which poisons the
workmen. For a long time the peculiar
symptoms Of this carbon bisulphide gas
were so much like alcoholic intoxicants
that the men who were effected were
thought to be drunk. First, they show
ed excitement and later they went into
collapse A rat when placed in a bottle
containing this gas acts in the same way