Vol. 60, 1909 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2')S THE CHARLOTTE MEDICAL JOURNAL.
varj'ing from oiie-fourth to one-half the di- while the father is breathing; quick-lime ,j
ameter of a red blood corpuscle. This dif- dust in the cement factory, his child is 1
erence in length and shape v^aries with the breathing pulverized glass in the glass fac- '\
virulence and stage of the disease. Short tory. The one eats the tissues of the lungs, |!
and thick bacilli indicate great virulence, the other irritates them, until they are in a
and when clumped toogether in schools the receptive condition for any germ disease. \
virulence is even greater, while if the bac- In the coal mines, while the fathers are be- ]
illi are long, flexed and scarce, it indicates ing crushed, crippled and killed, his chil- I
a chronic condition of long standing. There dren are working in the coal-breakers above. !
is also a marked difference in the anatomy For ten or elven hours a day these ehildren >.
of bacilli from sputum and those from cul- of ten or eleven years of age, stoop over the i
lure growth. chute and pick out the slate and other im- £
These little pointers I have learned part- purities from the coal as it moves past them, j
,
:
:
i
ly from actual experience in my labratory The air around them is so black with coal i
work since taking a sjjecial course in re- dust that they are compelled to wear lamps
search work at the Pathologic Institute in on their caps at noonday in order to seethe i
Berlin, and consider them worth remem- coal which is moving under their feet. i
bering. Many of these children contract miner's
j
Having in a crude way searched out the asthma, and finally develop pulmonary tu- (
real cause and working force that destroy berculosis. There are now in this country i
the living tissues of
organism (the tubercle
the vital
bacillus)
parts of our forty-two thousand
we will mines and quarries.
children
Eighty-two
employed in
thousand
\
\
proceed to show some of the chief modes of children are to day breathing the lint of cot- :
contagion, the main routes and thorough- ton mills in the United States. Five thoufares
travelled by this marching army of sand three hundred and sixty five are
destructive parasites whose camps and tern- breathing pulverized glass from glass facporary
abiding places are found in every tories. Eleven thousand four hundred and i
nook and hamlet throughout the world, sixty-two are steeping their systems in the '
!
Only recall some of the myriads of sources nicotine of tobacco factories,
from which this infection is carried and In the laundries of our countries little
spread over the country. Go with me, if girls and young maidens are standing all (
yon please, to the work-shops, and the par- day sorting filthy linen, or folding flat- i
asite-producing industries of our cities pieces into a hot mangle where the heat is
First among these are the dust-producing so intense that they are compelled to work
trades which cause many of the various almo,t without clothing. Many times they
throat and lung diseases. Take the cement are worked far into the night and must
factories that are now springing up all over turn to their homes through the dark and
our country and whose business it is to deserted streets of our cities, and in all
manufacture dust. The workers are .?ur- kinds of weather, uncared for and unprorounded
by and work in an atmosphere tected. We can readily anticipate the risk
made foggy with small particles of quick- these younggirls run in leaving these steamlime,
which makes up the major part of the heated apartments and rushing out intothei
commercial product called cement. .Add crisp, wintry night air, trudging their way
to this the fact that the workers, in order to through the suow or rain to their respective
adjust the machinery, and keep the equip- homes in some distant and perhaps unsaniment
going, must be constantly exposed to tary part of the city.
the sheets of flame that keep the massive Are these not favorable sources for the
cylinders red hot, and you will have only propagation and spread of tuberculosis?
a faint idea of the cement worker's life. Those induitries which employ little chil-
The clouds of curling dust arising from dren just long enough to sweat out their
these sactories can be seen for miles away, vitality, leaving them diminutive little
This dust, when inhaled, produces an irri- wrecks to drift aimlessly through a long,
tation of the mucous membranes of the dependent life of poverty and disease,
mouth, nose and throat, and is also carried should be classed as social parasites and
to the bronchial tubes and lungs, setting up should not exist in any civilized country,
irritation of these organs, and producing a We might cite hundreds of such sourc
raw surface for the direct invasion of the where the constitutions of the youth of o
tubercle bacilli. land are ground up io these mills of coJj
The cement factories of America might merce. After going through these varic
well be called the homes of tuberculosis, processes of grinding there is barely enot
This applies with equal emphasis to the fer- constitutional vitality left to survive th
tilizer plants, glass factories, cotton mills, age when tuberculosis and other contagion
coal mines, etc., etc. In glass factories, infections are most apt to attack and swal-J
children do a large part of the work, and low them up. It is usually wheu the cog^