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12
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
of even a neutral compound, or of any kind of gaseous matter not corresponding
in composition with pure air, the naturally required proportion of
air cannot enter the lungs at each breath, the changes produced by the
respiration of the body cannot be effected, and the health must suffer.
Another evil resulting from the mixture of any effluvium with air is this: if
the air contain any zymotic poison, as that of scarlet fever, measles, or typhus—
if this air had otherwise its natural constitution and were abundantly present,
the poison would be so diluted or decomposed as to be incapable of producing
infection, which cannot occur if it be mixed with foreign compounds.
It is a common statement that the workmen engaged in manufactories of
various kinds do not suffer in their health; hence the emanations evolved are
said not to be injurious. Now it is a very difficult matter to procure satisfactory
evidence that such emanations are not injurious, because the sanitary
conditions under which the workmen live are complicated. A man may live
to be sixty years of age whilst engaged in a manufactory; but before we
could admit this to be proof of the innoxious quality of the emanations, it
should be shown that this man in all probability would not have lived to be
more than this age; in fact, his life might still have been shortened.
Manufacturers are very fond of adducing isolated instances of this kind when
found fault with for poisoning the air, but they prove nothing to the point.
There is, however, a reason why those engaged in many manufacturing
processes should suffer less than the neighbouring inhabitants. The premises
in which they work are generally large; the men strong, and in active exercise,
and their occupation laborious; and as a man under these circumstances
breathes more frequently and fully than those who are sedentary or less
actively engaged, they obtain a full supply of the air required, in spite of the
mixture of a certain proportion of foreign matter. But when the premises
are confined, and the workmen crowded, there is no question that they themselves
suffer.
2. (6.) Corrosive and irritating emanations are in general so destructive to
property, that their influence upon health cannot form the question : they
are indisputable nuisances in a crowded neighbourhood, and should at once
be done away with.
2. (c.) Some emanations exert a zymotic action (from Zuów, "to ferment"),
a term denoting a change by which some morbid poison or form of decomposing
matter, brought into contact with the human body or organic substances,
gives rise to the production of a new quantity of the same or some similar
matter, which interferes with the natural vital processes—poisons the blood,
or alters the composition of the organic substance. An instance of the
former is met with in smallpox, or any eruptive febrile desease; of the
latter, in the action of yeast upon any fermentible liquid, or of foul air upon
meat, in hastening its decomposition.*
Now the most minute portion of the virus or poison of smallpox taken
from a pock, when applied beneath the skin of a human being, will poison
the blood, and from this will be thrown out thousands of new pocks, each
capable of yielding myriads of minute portions, capable of reproducing the
disease. Or, to put this matter in another light, the poison has grown, just
as a little yeast added to a liquid susceptible of fermentation will grow, and
reproduce pounds of new yeast. Now the poison of smallpox is thrown out
* Epidemic, endemic, and infectious or contagious diseases are called zymotic,
because the poisons which produce them act in this manner.