Dokument 
Sex in industry : a plea for the working-girl / by Azel Ames
Entstehung
Seite
76
Einzelbild herunterladen

76

SEX IN INDUSTRY.

hard coughing and occasionally whitish expectoration. In the first year of work, the operative suffers con­stantly from bronchial catarrh; and a considerable proportion of those who come to this occupation from rural districts abandon it, even though they may be only sufferers from constant catarrh, without other worse symptoms.

“ If, however, they persevere in this occupation, more important symptoms supervene, sometimes soon, often after a year of work, such as cough with pectoral pain, marked anaamia, obstinate debility, and loss of appetite. White viscid sputa is now expecto­rated with difficulty, and shows under the microscope cotton-fibres for several hours after quitting the fac­tory. Marked emaciation, sometimes — but rarely — profuse diarrhoea, deprives the operator of his strength, and compels him to leave his work, and be­take himself to his home or to the hospital.

“ These, of course, are the most unfavorable, and happily not the most frequent cases. But people very often go on coughing their whole life long, and die at an advanced age. . . . Sickly people, especial­ly those liable to pulmonary affections, do not bear up long. The most unfavorable cases are usually found among women; and in a factory of three hundred or four hundred operatives, there will generally be found two or three cases of this kind every year. Other diseases of not infrequent occurrence are phthisis,