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47
By the kindness of the Superintendents of the Royal
Laboratory and Carriage Departments, and of the Principal
Medical Officer, I was enabled to inspect the different workshops
of these departments. Many of these are so lofty and
the cubic space so ample, that the conditions of labour approach
those of open air work. In most the ventilation is good, much
improvement having taken place in recent years, and the usual
practice is to sprinkle and sweep the floors every morning.
Notices are posted in every shop forbidding expectoration, and
though the rule is not yet rigidly enforced, breaches of it seem
to be exceptional.
The workshops in the danger buildings however, though
kept exceptionally clean, are an exception to the rule of good
ventilation. It is considered necessary to keep these rooms at
a high temperature, and to prevent the access of outside dust,
and consequently windows are as a rule kept closed. This
may explain the special incidence of Phthisis on the men
working in these buildings.
93. The figures given above do not indicate special incidence
on any one or more workshops, and I do not consider these as
frequent sources of infection, although no doubt some personal
infection takes place there. It is probable that the want of
ventilation and the high temperature in some shops acts
indirectly by weakening the constitutional resistance and thus
making the men more susceptible to infection met with in
other places.
Samples of sweepings from the floors of six different workshops
were examined at the Lister Institute by innoculation
experiments for the presence of tubercle bacilli; the bacilli
were not found in any of the samples.