The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States/Section IV
SECTION IV.
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF THE POOR INJURIOUS TO HEALTH.
The employments of manufacturers are all injurious to the health, of the body, and the improvement of the mind. These pernicious effects arise from—
1st. The sedentary nature of them, by which the necessary action and exercise of the body are prevented.
2dly. From the forced and unnatural postures of the body required in many trades, by which the functions of the body necessary to life and health are impeded.
3dly. From these being carried on in confined, unwholesome atmospheres, rendered nauseous and putrid from the filth of the rooms, and from the exhalations of their own bodies; as well as from the effluvia of the substances they work on, as oils, sizes, mercury, lead, paint; damps and noxious air in mines, &c., all add hurtful qualities to the air. Under the same head may be placed the excessive heat in glass-houses, smelting-houses, foundries, &c.
From one or other of these disadvantages there is scarcely any trade exempt, and hardly any individual of any trade that is not more or less affected by them. The sedentary kind appears to be least prejudicial; but what a number of pale, languid, dropsical objects there are among women who make bone-lace, those are witnesses to, who have seen the many thousands of such in those places where it is manufactured.
The infinite number of trades into which these noxious employments branch out, may be seen in the back streets of great cities and manufacturing towns, as also may the many wretched objects there produced by them.
This general account will render it evident, to persons of reflection, what great devastations are made by the manufactures on the human species; it is therefore needless to enumerate the particular diseases they occasion. I cannot help, however, observing, that there is a great multiplicity of trades in which mercury is made use of: in some of these the workmen's lives are measured with great exactness; after suffering excruciating torments, they die, with great punctuality, in a year and a half.
Nor can I forget mentioning the poor chimney-boy, who, after suffering inconceivable hardships, dies frequently, at length, of a disease attended with the most acute of all pains—the cancer.