ing more than a sign of checked development,
which does not fail to bear fruit in later years. Distortions of the
legs, knees bent inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the
spinal column and other malformations, appear the more readily in
constitutions thus weakened, in consequence of the almost universally
constrained position during work; and they are so frequent that in
Yorkshire and Lancashire, as in Northumberland and Durham, the assertion
is made by many witnesses, not only by physicians, that a miner may be
recognised by his shape among a hundred other persons. The women seem to
suffer especially from this work, and are seldom, if ever, as straight as
other women. There is testimony here, too, to the fact that deformities
of the pelvis and consequent difficult, even fatal, childbearing arise
from the work of women in the mines. But apart from these local
deformities, the coal miners suffer from a number of special affections
easily explained by the nature of the work. Diseases of the digestive
organs are first in order; want of appetite, pains in the stomach,
nausea, and vomiting, are most frequent, with violent thirst, which can
be quenched only with the dirty, lukewarm water of the mine; the
digestion is checked and all the other affections are thus invited.
Diseases of the heart, especially hypertrophy, inflammation of the heart
and pericardium, contraction of the _auriculo-ventricular_ communications
and the entrance of the _aorta_ are also mentioned repeatedly as diseases
of the miners, and are readily explained by overwork; and the same is
true of the almost universal rupture which is a direct consequence of
protracted over-exertion. In part from the same cause and in part from
the bad, dust-filled atmosphere mixed with carbonic acid and hydrocarbon
gas, which might so readily be avoided, there arise numerous painful and
dangerous affections of the lungs, especially asthma, which in some
districts appears in the fortieth, in others in the thirtieth year in
most of the miners, and makes them unfit for work in a short time. Among
those employed in wet workings the oppression in the chest naturally
appears much earlier; in some districts of Scotland between the twentieth
and thirtieth years, during which time the affected lungs are especially
susceptible to inflammations and diseases of a feverish nature. The
peculiar disease of workers of this sort is "black spittle," which arises
from the satu