Note 498 — MINERAL POISONS. (continued 4)

There is no trade more immediately destructive of health than dry grinding steel; the workmen are usually attacked by what is called the grinder’s asthma at twenty-five or thirty years of age, and few of them live to forty. The Society of Arts have long offered a reward for the invention of some mode of securing the workmen from this dreadful calamity, and in 1822 awarded their gold medal to Mr. J. H. Abraham, of Sheffield, for his Magnetic Guard for Needle-pointers, (see Transactions for 1822.) The contrivance is likely to answer its intended purpose, provided the obstinacy and prejudice of the workmen can be overcome by the perseverance of the master manufacturers, who are morally bound to adopt every probable means of securing the health of those employed under them, even though their servants should themselves neglect it.