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The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States
The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States Author:Charles Hall Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION IV. THE EMPLOYMENTS OF THE POOR INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. The employments of manufacturers are all injurious to the health of the body, and the improvem... more »ent of the mind. These pernicious effects arise from— 1st. The sedentary nature of them, by which the necessary action and exercise of the body are prevented. 2dly. From the forced, and unnatural postures of the body required in many trades, by which the functions of the body necessary to life and health are impeded. 3dly. From these being carried on in confined, unwholesome atmospheres, rendered nauseous and putrid from the filth of the rooms, and from the exhalations of their own bodies; as well as from the effluvia of the substances they work on, as oils, sizes, mercury, lead, paint; damps and noxious air in mines, andc., all add hurtful qualities to the ' air. Under the same head may be placed the excessive heat in glass-houses, smelting-houses, foundries, andc. From one or other of these disadvantages there chapter{Section 4 is scarcely any trade exempt, and hardly any individual of any trade that is not more or less affected by them. The sedentary kind appears to be least prejudicial; but what a number of pale, languid, dropsical objects there are among women who make bone-lace, those are witnesses to, who have seen the many thousands of such in those places where it is manufactured. The infinite number of trades into which these noxious employments branch out, may be seen in. the back streets of great cities and manufacturing towns, as also may the many wretched objects there produced by them. This general account will render it evident, to persons of reflection, what great devastations are made by the manufactures on the human species ; it is therefore needless to enumerate the particular d...« less