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A college periodical, conducted by friends of mine, still undergraduates, tempted me into print, and there is no form of lead-poisoning which more rapidly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches the young author through mental contact with type-metal. Qui a bu, boira, he who has once been a drinker will drink again, says the French proverb.
I might not believe it, but he knew it for a fact. Fifthly, the work-people simply would not learn the gravity of the danger, and would eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sorts of risks, so that as my uncle put it: "the fools deserve what they get." Sixthly, he and several associated firms had organised a simple and generous insurance scheme against lead-poisoning risks.
Deep narcosis and anesthesia were induced, and two hours after awakening his breath smelled strongly of iodoform. There are two similar instances recorded in England. Pope mentions two fatal cases of lead-poisoning from diachylon plaster, self-administered for the purpose of producing abortion.
A delicate test for lead in water is to stir the water, concentrated or not, with a glass rod dipped in ammonium sulphide: a brown coloration is produced. One-tenth of a grain of lead in a gallon of water may be detected. Chronic lead-poisoning is an 'industrial disease, and, being an occupation risk, its victims are entitled to compensation at the hands of their employers.
Lead water-pipes, the use of cosmetics and hair-dyes, coloring matter in confectionery and in pastry, habitual biting of silk threads, imperfectly burnt pottery, and cooking bread with painted wood have been mentioned as causes of chronic lead-poisoning. Mercury.
So the man or woman who has tasted type is sure to return to his old indulgence sooner or later. In that fatal year I had my first attack of authors' lead-poisoning, and I have never got quite rid of it from that day to this. But for that I might have applied myself more diligently to my legal studies, and carried a green bag in place of a stethoscope and a thermometer up to the present day.
As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted in my former paper: 'Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and 'tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some constitooshuns is strong and some is weak. Retracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty.
We are not allowed to tell you about the War, but I may say that we are now in the trenches. We are all in the pink, and not many of the boys has gotten a dose of lead-poisoning yet. It is a pity that the names of places have to be left blank. Otherwise we should get some fine phonetic spelling. Our pronunciation is founded on no pedantic rules.
Here was a man who had lost a finger of his left hand the victim of a cloth loom; and here a pallid-looking man, showing when he spoke or laughed slate-colored gums a case of lead-poisoning, with a painful death as the inevitable result.
Nowadays an author knows that there is a beast of burden, the worker, to whom, for the sum of a few shillings a day, he can entrust the printing of his books; but he hardly cares to know what a printing office is like. If the compositor suffers from lead-poisoning, and if the child who sees to the machine dies of anæmia, are there not other poor wretches to replace them?
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