March 20, 191i.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

633

A new Order, entitled the Safety Lamps Order
of March 9, 1914, amending the previous one of
August 26, 1913, has been made by the Home
Secretary.

The annual dinner of the Institution of Mining
and Metallurgy was held at the Savoy Hotel on
Thursday, 12th inst.

Mr. Churchill, on Tuesday, presented a statement
of the Chairman of the Royal Commission on Ruel
and Engines, showing the advantages attaching to
the use of oil as a substitute for coal for naval
purposes.

A report has been issued by the Board of Trade
[Cd. 7283] which gives some interesting informa-
tion regarding the progress of profit-sharing and
labour co-partnership in other countries.

The North Wales miners have resolved to take a
ballot on the dispute of fitters’ wages, which is at
the present time the subject of an appeal before the
House of Lords. Notices if given would affect
upwards cf 10,000 men.

A ballot has been taken throughout the South
Wales coalfield on the question of increasing the
-contributions to the Federation from Is. per month
to Is. 4d. The executive council consider such an
increase necessary in order to cope with new develop-
ments.

As was expected, the Yorkshire Miners’ Association
•decided to hand in notices in order to enforce their
interpretation of the present minimum wage. The
notices, numbering about 170,000, have now been
handed in. The difficulty was discussed at the
meeting of the executive of the Miners’ Federation
•on Wednesday, who decided to ask the conference to
.await the result of the meeting of the English
‘Conciliation Board to-day (Friday) before reaching a
.final decision.

At a conference at Manchester on Monday between
representatives of the Lancashire and Cheshire
Miners’ Federation and the colliery owners, a
minimum scale of wages for surface workers was
agreed upon. The minimum ranges from Is. 7d. for
boys under 14 years, to 4s. 7d. for workers of 21 years
and over. Weekly averages of the minimum of
all classes of miners were agreed to instead of
fortnightly, as at present.

It is officially announced that the Miners’ Federa-
tion have withdrawn their appeal in the case of
Blackledge v. Eames, which affects the rights of
miners with reference to the appointment of check-
weighmen. The case, which arose out of a dispute
regarding the appointment of Mr. Seth Blackledge
as checkweighman at the Maypole Colliery, was
tried by the Wigan magistrates, who decided that
two shafts did not constitute separate and distinct
mines.

The Milroy lectures delivered by
Hygiene in Dr. Frank Shufelebotham before
Coalmines, the Royal College of Physicians,
which have appeared in our columns
in an abridged form, deserve the widest publicity. The
lack of any systematic study of occupational disease in
this country is a reproach that cannot easily be met,
when we remember that there are funds and organi-
sations in plenty for the investigation of tropical
diseases that have a remoter bearing upon social
efficiency.

The author of these lectures lays the blame for
this neglect in part on the medical profession. Indus-
trial diseases, he says, have been neglected in the
medical schools and by the leaders of the profession,
and there are thousands of medical men working in
the industrial districts of England who have never
received any training in the medical schools on the
diseases which they may be called upon at a moment’s
notice to diagnose and to treat. Under such circum-
stances, their experience must be gained at the
expense of the patient, and—we may add—they
frequently become the dupes of the skilful
malingerer.

It should be remembered, however, that industrial
hygiene is a subject to be approached with the utmost
discrimination. Whilst it is impossible to condone
the ostrich-like policy of denying relationship between
industry and disease, a too sedulous enthusiasm may
•often lead to dangerous extremes. It is a remark-

able fact that several of the scheduled diseases were
practically unheard of until the present Workmen’s
Compensation Act was passed. Probably the argu-
ment that the pecuniary inducement has been
responsible for the increased number of cases is
only partially true. Dr. Shufelebotham points out
that miners are peculiarly subject to nervous com-
plaints, and that insignificant physical injuries, to
which miners are naturally liable, frequently result
in neurasthenia of a pronounced type. Among people
of a nervous type, the implied imminence of certain
special ailments may actually induce them. It is
like putting a medical work in the hands of the
layman; he immediately thinks that he is assailed by
every disease in the book. Again, whilst we are
not prepared to dissent from the proposition that,
where the events of a man’s employment have caused
him to lose his wages, he should be compensated
for such losses, it is also true that repeated breaks in
a man’s labour may actually evoke maladies that
were dormant or non-existent so long as he continued
at work. Every time the furnace is damped down
it means loss of energy when the time comes for
blowing-in again.

We are only speaking of the coalmining industry,
and it cannot be too often repeated that this industry,
which to some people seems so unnatural and so
hazardous, in reality possesses an excellent record.
As Dr. Chauvet, of Paris, says: “If the miner for
some hours is deprived of the benefit of light, on the
other hand he knows nothing of intemperate weather
nor of cold. He works below ground in a supportable
temperature that is nearly equal at all seasons.
Protected from microbe-bearing dusts and corrosive
vapours, he has no fear of industrial poisoning, and
the sanitary conditions in which he labours are far
better than those surrounding the work of glassmakers,
quarry men, chemical workers, and many others.”
This, no doubt, is only true in a general and
comparative sense. The whole burden of Dr.
Shufelebotham’s lectures is to point out that coal-
mining, notwithstanding the fact that the general
health of the workman is excellent, has its special
dangers and its special diseases. That is a fact that
cannot be ignored, and we think there is a greater
likelihood of these dangers being eliminated if their
nature is understood and the study of their causation
and treatment is left in the hands of those qualified
to deal with them. The owners of collieries have
certainly done their share to promote the safety and
health of the workmen, and, if some of the curative
legislation of the past has not only failed in its
object, but has actually induced other dangers, it has
been largely due to the fact that, whilst experience
has suggested remedies, it has been left to amateurs
to dictate them in the end. Over and above all this
is the error that propriety can be enforced by
legislation. As Dr. Shufelebotham observes, “the
occurrence of accidents and the prevalence of disease
peculiar to the coalminer will not depend altogether
upon legislation.” Of much greater importance is
the human factor. To take a typical instance:
although so many diseases are scheduled under the
Workmen’s Compensation Act as being peculiar to
coalminers, by far the most serious cause of mortality
in the mining community, apart from accidents, is
one that has nothing whatever to do with the
occupation—we refer to the high rate of infantile
mortality in colliery districts.

We can only refer here to a few of the points
raised by Dr. Shufelebotham. Of these his sugges-
tion that a few beds should always be provided at
collieries is one well worthy of attention. At
Senghenydd, it appears, seven of the men rescued
from the pit had to be sent to Cardiff Infirmary,
distant 11 miles away, with the result that one died
on the way, and only one of the remaining six
survived. When pithead baths become general it
would not seem to be impracticable to provide for a
few portable bedsteads that could be erected in the
building. At the Maries Colliery, in the Pas-de-
Calais, a hospital is provided right at the pithead,
and several of the new collieries in South Yorkshire
are proceeding on the same lines. Measures of this
sort are sometimes less costly than insurance.

Of special interest are Dr. Shufelebotham’s remarks
on the use of stonedust. We think he is right in

advising caution. He points out that Dr. Beattie’s
experiments on guinea pigs, upon which so much
argument has been based, cannot be regarded as
conclusive, as they were entirely different from the
slow and regular inhalation of dust which would
occur in the case of a miner. There would seem to
be no safe method, indeed, of ascertaining with
accuracy the effect of any particular dust upon a
man under actual conditions, and this should make
us hesitate before any risk is taken on a large scale
that might result in wholesale injury to the health
of very large numbers of men.

The lecturer dealt at length with all the scheduled
diseases, and colliery owners will note with mixed
feelings that he suggests the addition of a new
disease. Dr. Shufelebotham’s tozir de force is the
discovery of a new ailment—new, at least, so far as
this country is concerned, for we seem to remember
an account at the Brussels Congress in 1908 of very
similar conditions. Miner’s itch or miner’s rash is a
combination of erythema and boils, which in some
pits has incapacitated considerable numbers of work-
men, and it is an interesting fact that the disease has
been found only in hot bituminous seams.

In attempting to arrive at the cause, Dr. Shuefle-
botham points out that in such conditions there may
be to some slight extent continual, though slow,
distillation of the bituminous coal with the formation
of not exactly coal-tar products, but, at all events,
bodies resulting from the decomposition of the coal.
This suggests an affection somewhat similar to the
epitheliomatous cancer to which briquette-makers are
subject, due to certain ingredients in the pitch used
as a binding agent. We are steadily approaching
to a knowledge of the true nature of these
substances, and it will be interesting to find
what relation, if any, this miners’ skin affection
bears to the pitch warts. Dr. Shufelebotham
also suggests that mechanical irritation of the coal-
dust may be enhanced by profuse perspiration, and
he also mentions that he has found the same bacteria
in the coaldust and in the pus extracted from the
boils; or, again, the trouble may be due to the
oxidation of sulphate of iron, which tallies with the
Belgian experience, if we remember rightly.

The claim that this disease should be added to the
schedule is one that, of course, must be settled
entirely upon its merits. Many of the ailments
to be found there now are “benign” diseases, and
if men are actually debarred from earning their live-
lihood through “ miner’s itch,” there is a primd facie
case for its inclusion. There is the advantage that
the symptoms at any rate are unmistakable and
cannot be simulated; it thus has some points in
its favour over a few of the other “ diseases.”
Ankylostomiasis, for the present, is not an active
disease in this country. As Dr. Shufelebotham
observes, the “beat” series of diseases have no
history of accident, and may in certain cases arise
from causes outside the employment, without there
being any means of settling whether they do so or
not; in the case of miners’ nystagmus, the symptoms
are so largely subjective that malingering is always
to be suspected.

The principal matter of interest, however, in this
new disease is that it opens out a most attractive line
of speculation. It has been found to occur up to the
present in certain seams in North Staffordshire and
Fifeshire ; can it be that there is any connection
between it and spontaneous heating of the coal ? The
distillation theory bears a striking resemblance to
that which the chemists advance as being the
predominant cause of gob fires, and it may be
remembered that Dr. Wheeler, in giving evidence
before the Spontaneous Combustion Committee,
tentatively urged that some consideration should be
given to the fermentation theory, which itself is
founded upon the presence of micro-organisms in the
coal. The parallel may be far-fetched, but it serves
to illustrate the relationship between science and
industry.

It is now generally admitted |that the mining
engineer has greatly to gain from the co-operation of
the chemist; in the elucidation of the coaldust and
gob-fire problems, no progress would have been
made if there had been no appeal to the chemist.
Similarly, the pathologist has enabled us to gain a