to which I can give you a pretty clear reply. Our men are generally healthy, and the most so of the labouring poor: many have been in our service and knowledge fifteen and twenty years, and I do not recollect one case of the kind occurring (in our establishment) in London. The first process in dressing is to put the skins into a pit of water to soften them, which is often used two or three times, that is, for two or three parcels, before it is changed, until the stench is intolerable. After this process the skins are struck out over a beam, and hung up, side by side, as close as possible, in a small room excluded from external air, which we term a stove: in this state they remain until they heat and slime, so that we can pull off the wool. The process of putrefaction is here so rapid as to disengage large quantities of volatile ammoniac, affecting the eyes of strangers with tears, and their noses with the most offensive smell. Our men always pull the skins in the stove in cold weather from preference, and are occupied in it a whole day at a time without injury." Another gentleman, a brother of Mr. Newman's, concerned in the leather-dressing trade, but not in the same house, in Bermondsey, informs him "that so far from our workmen being unhealthy or particularly subject to fevers, the reverse is the fact; the men employed look generally robust and healthy. In a concern in this line of business of fifty years' standing, in which fifty men are constantly employed, the men have been uniformly healthy; and in this a circumstance is deserving of notice, viz. the men who work upon the raw skins, from which there is a constant and profuse exhalation of putrid steams, and those employed at the lime and tan-pits, are equally healthy." Mr. Newman the writer of the above, says there are about sixty leather-dressers' and tanners' yards in Bermondsey, and in them about 700 men are constantly employed.

It may perhaps be objected to this account that the business. of leather-dressers in other countries had been represented as extremely unhealthy. Hippocrates is supposed to have meant something of this kind as the cause, when he mentions the case of a person, Philiscus residing near the wall, who died on the sixth day of a malignant fever (Epidemic. Lib. i. s. 3.); VOL. I.

3 II

for anciently, and now indeed, offensive trades of this kind

TO

were carried on in the suburbs, aga To Tuxes of cities. This was the case at Rome, beyond the Tiber, and some of the Latin poets have exercised their wit in allusions to it. It is highly probable, however, that the real cause naturally existed in the spot itself set apart for the "sordidiores artes," and that what was attributed to them proceeded from the marshy nature of the soil. Certain it is, without recurring to this explanation, we cannot reconcile Mr. Bevington's and Mr. Newman's two respectable living witnesses, with the testimony of Ramazzini and Mercurialis, Martial and Juvenal, as quoted by him; and there is sufficient evidence that the Transtiberina Regio of Rome, and the Paduano (once, 17th century, male sanus, bestiis quam hominibus aptior) were proverbially unhealthy from their marshes, and that Bermondsey is not: See Ramazzini, De Morb. Artific. cap. 15.: and Annotat. in Lib. Lud. Cornelii, Veneti de Vit. Sobr. Commodis: and de Virg. Vestal. Valetud. tuend Dissertat.

5. I borrowed the following singular fact from the ingenuous and experienced Ramazzini. “In hac civitate (Modena), quæ pro suo ambitu satis populosa est, ideoque domos confertas habet ac præaltas, mos est ut tertio quoque anno in singulis domibus cloaca expurgentur, quæ per vicos discurrunt. Cùm ergo domi meæ id opus fieret, contemplatus unum ex operariis istis in antro illo Charonæo magnâ anxietate ac sollicitudine opus suum peragentem, miseratus tam improbi laboris, ipsum interrogavi, cur tam sollicité laboraret, et non pacatius id ageret, ne ex nimio labore in multam lassitudinem incideret, tunc miser ex antro illo oculos attollens, meque intuitus: nemo, inquit, nisi expertus, imaginari potest, quanti constet, plus quàm quatuor horis in hoc loco morari, idem enim est cæcus fieri. Rursus ab eodem quæsivi, num in faucibus ardorem ullum persentiant, difficultatem aliquam respirandi patiantur, capitis dolore tententur, num odor ille nares percellat; nauseam pariat; nihil horum respondit ille, neque pars ulla in hoc opere mulctatur, præter oculos." This account was afterwards confirmed by his observing a number of these people reduced to blindness and beggary. "Oculis tamen solummodo, bellum

tam atrox indicunt fœtidæ exhalationes istæ, ac illos acutissimis spiculis sic feriunt, ut illis vitam, id est lumen, eripiant." Thus, as certain acrid substances seem exclusively to affect different and distinct parts of the body, as cantharides the bladder, the torpedo the nerves "sic halitus illi ex humanis fæcibus per varios corruptionis gradus trium annorum spatio, talem adsciscant naturam, ut oculos tantùm lacessant, cæteris vero partibus ignoscant." (De Morb. Artific. cap. 13.) This fact is no less important than curious, as it tends to show the inconsiderate conclusions of some eminent writers respecting the influence of the exhalations of privies on the health of men. Now whether the effect of these exhalations is asphyxia at Paris, according to Sauvages (Nos. Meth. i. 820), or amaurosis at Modena, according to Ramazzini, in either case there is ample proof that they cannot be productive of putrid or pestilential fevers.

6. The spontaneous extrication of putrid vapors from the sepulchral vaults of the cathedral church of Dijon, celebrated for having given occasion to the first experimental essays of oxygenants in the decomposition of putrid and contagious effluvia, may seem an exception. But this, in truth, can be consi dered only as a mephitis acting on those within its influence, in a greater or less degree, according to its concentration, and producing the usual effect of such effluvia, asphyxia. What M. de Morveau says of the appearance of a contagious fever in the neighbourhood, as connected with this mephitic vapor, is extremely vague and indeterminate. By sprinkling with a considerable quantity of the vinegar of the four thieves, "the odor of the putrid effluvia was merely masked for a moment, and soon reappeared with its former activity, spreading to the neighbourhood, where the symptoms of a contagious fever began to appear." When the fumigation had been completed, he does not say that this contagious fever had been stopped or prevented: in fact he says nothing about it: he adverts only to the purification of a mass of air contaminated by these mephitic vapors. (See his Treatise on the means of purifying Infected Air, translated by Dr. Hall, p. 25-29. See also Sauvages,

428

Nos. Meth. tom. i. 819.) Ramazzini is by no means satisfactory on the subject, indulging in declamation, and exhibiting no proofs that "post magna prælia commissa, per insepulta cadavera, seu per antiqua sepulchra incautè aperta, diras pestilentias enatas, quæ ingentem populorum stragem ediderint.” De Vespillonum Morbis.

A Case of Death, produced by Arsenic.

By JOHN YELLOLY, M. D. Physician to the London Hospital.

From the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, for 1809.

I AM induced, by the remarks made in the last number of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, on the necessity of attention to individual cases of death by poison, to transmit to the editors the following history and dissection.

On the evening of the 21st of April last, I was requested to see the apprentice of a goldsmith, in Bell alley, Lombard street, who was reported to have taken some arsenic the night before. I went immediately, but, on my arrival, found that he had just expired. He had been attended by Mr. Unwin, apothecary, of Widegate, St. Bishopsgate, and from him, and the individuals of the family in which the young man lived, I obcaned the following particulars.

He was about sixteen years of age, and informed Mr. Unwin, that, in consequence of a few words with his master, the day before, he had resolved to destroy himself; and that, at about ten o'clock the same evening, he drank off some gruel, in which he had dissolved, in a saucepan, over the fire, about a pennyweight of the white oxide of arsenic, of which there was generally some kept in the shop, for the purposes of the

trade.*

On examining the saucepan, Mr. Unwin found in it the remains of the gruel, and about twenty-six grains of the white oxide of arsenic, in rough powder, though the lad told him,

• Arsenic, I am informed, is used in making a solder for inferior descriptions of gold work, called arsenic solder.

that he had only employed about a pennyweight, or twentyfour grains.*

His master's daughter observed him, in the course of the evening, throw something from a paper into a saucepan of gruel, and simmer it for a little time upon the fire. She and the maid servant saw him drink off the gruel; and the servant, having taken a tea spoonful of it, by his desire, was made very sick and uncomfortable the whole night. With regard to the quantity of arsenic which had been taken, it was supposed, from the diminution which was observed in a small packet of it, bought a short time before, that it must have been about half an ounce. But this is only conjecture. At any rate, the lad must have been much mistaken in the quantity which he imagined he had used, as there was more found in the remains of the gruel than he stated that he had put into it.

Soon after the gruel was taken, thus charged with arsenic, he was attacked with vomiting, and, in a short time subsequent to this, with purging; both of which continued with violence the whole of the night. He drank large quantities of both warm and cold water, but did not complain of any pain in the stomach or bowels, nor did it appear to the family that he suffered any. About four hours after taking the arsenic, he complained of a severe cramp in one of his legs. He was much distressed with a sensation of cold during the night, which made it necessary for him to have a great quantity of bedclothes.

Mr. Unwin saw him, for the first time, at half past ten on the morning after the arsenic was taken; his pulse was then not more than 40, and very languid. His lower extremities were cold, stiff, and without the power of motion; but, by the application of warmth, the stiffness was, in some measure, diminished, and the power of motion, in a small degree, restored. Mr. Unwin kept up the vomiting, by means of emetics and copious diluents; but the purging ceased about twelve

* As a proof that there was no mistake with regard to the nature of the powder found in the remains of the gruel, it may be proper to mention, that when made into a solution with carbonate of potash, it afforded a lively green precipitate on the addition of a solution of sulphate of copper.