inders,
who grind wet as well as dry, die between forty and forty-five years,
and the table cutlery grinders, who grind wet, die between the
fortieth and fiftieth year."

The same physician gives the following description of the course of the
disease called grinders' asthma:

"They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they
have good constitutions, rarely notice any symptoms before the
twentieth year. Then the symptoms of their peculiar disease appear.
They suffer from shortness of breath at the slightest effort in going
up hill or up stairs, they habitually raise the shoulders to relieve
the permanent and increasing want of breath; they bend forward, and
seem, in general, to feel most comfortable in the crouching position
in which they work. Their complexion becomes dirty yellow, their
features express anxiety, they complain of pressure upon the chest.
Their voices become rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound
is as if air were driven through a wooden tube. From time to time
they expectorate considerable quantities of dust, either mixed with
phlegm or in balls or cylindrical masses, with a thin coating of
mucus. Spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat,
colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh, and all the usual
symptoms of consumption of the lungs finally carry them off, after
they have lingered months, or even years, unfit to support themselves
or those dependent upon them. I must add that all attempts which have
hitherto been made to prevent grinders' asthma, or to cure it, have
wholly failed."

All this Knight wrote ten years ago; since then the number of grinders
and the violence of the disease have increased, though attempts have been
made to prevent it by covered grindstones and carrying off the dust by
artificial draught. These methods have been at least partially
successful, but the grinders do not desire their adoption, and have even
destroyed the contrivance here and there, in the belief that more workers
may be attracted to the business and wages thus reduced; they are for a
short life and a merry one. Dr. Knight has often told grinders who came
to him with the first symptoms of asthma that a return to grinding means
certain death, but with no avail. He who is once a grinder falls into
despair, as though he had sold himself to the devil. Education in
Sheffield is upon a very low p