On the Influence of the Factory System in the developement of Pulmonary Consumption. By D. NOBLE, Esq., Surgeon, Man

chester.

[Read before the Statistical Section of the British Association at Manchester,

23rd June, 1842.]

THE influence of the factory system, in the deterioration of health, and the production of disease, has been the subject of great diversity of opinion. It has been denounced, in the strongest terms, by physicians of the highest repute, and has been reprobated as destructive to every sound condition of the body, and as the fruitful source of consumption and scrofula. Before the Committee of the House of Commons, obtained some years ago by the late Mr. Sadler, these views were very unequivocally expressed by metropolitan members of the medical profession; and one witness, who it appeared had had some experience in the early part of his career in this centre of manufacturing industry, made bold to assert that scrofulous diseases were immeasurably more abundant in Manchester than in the metropolis and most other places; and that he thought the proportion of individuals in this district in whom such diseases were developed could not be less than one in ten. Whilst such views have been promulgated by one class of medical men, there are others who have gone into an opposite extreme, and have maintained that factory labour is actually protective from consumption and other scrofulous affections, and that, generally speaking and relatively, such deviations from sound health are less frequent here than elsewhere. Amidst such contrariety as to pure matter of fact on the part of those to whom the educated public naturally look as authorities upon such a subject, it may be very difficult to determine the real state of things. Many intelligent and well informed persons, both medical and other, do regard the working in factories, especially on the part of the young, as giving rise to pulmonary consumption, or as prematurely inducing it where a strong predisposition already exists. That in a great many instances individuals arrive at this conclusion from what they really see is undoubted; and it is also true that others are guided to it rather by prematurely theorizing concerning the effects upon the animal economy of a high temperature with sudden transitions to cold, and of the inhalation of dusty particles incident to many factory occupations. These deductions, however, may be erroneous; consumption may be as little determined by factory labour as by the average of operative pursuits, and the disease may as little abound in these districts as in those where no factory employment prevails, but which are similarly conditioned in other respects.

I propose in the present paper to examine, in the first place, to what extent the positive results obtained by the Registrar-general confirm the idea that consumption is more frequent in this manufacturing town. of Manchester than in other places; these results I shall compare with corresponding ones gathered from other large towns, where little or no manufacturing prevails; and I shall then subjoin some statistical data obtained by myself from an examination, in conjunction with Mr. Ner Gardiner, the Superintendent Registrar of this district, of the registration books of the township of Manchester for a period of three years—data which will contribute in some degree to satisfy the inquiry as to the pro