nd
impure atmosphere, which with difficulty sustains life, and which is
demonstrably calculated, from its deleterious qualities, to induce
serious disease. The effects manifest in the parent descend, and visible
in the youngest children; they are squalid and wretched-looking,--and
how can such offspring be otherwise? They are exceedingly subject to all
children's diseases, and peculiarly predisposed to pulmonary irritation
of one kind or other.

With regard to medical treatment, little can be done after the disease
has passed its first stage. Early removal from the occupation, and
proper attention to nutrition, alone seem to hold out the hope of
prolonging the life of the patient; but if there be carbon lodged in the
pulmonary tissues, there is a certainty of its sooner or later proving
fatal. Attention to the state of the digestive organs, and using every
means to remove the dyspeptic symptoms, which are prominently present
throughout the various stages of this disease, are indispensably
requisite; and, as to nutrition, the nature of the diet should be as
generous as possible. Anodynes and expectorants are the only remedies
which seem at all efficacious in allaying irritation.

With a view to remove urgent symptoms, venesection has repeatedly been
had recourse to, but in almost all instances I would say, with
decidedly bad effects. Blood-letting does harm, producing general
debility and rapid sinking.[25]

With regard to the prevention of this disease, ventilation, as has been
stated, is very much neglected in the pits now under consideration,
where the various cases have occurred; and to that neglect I ascribe the
prevalence of the malady. In those pits referred to, the workable
apartments are so confined, and become after a time so destitute of
oxygen, as, along with the smoke from lamps and gunpowder, to render the
air unfit for healthy respiration. The only effectual remedy is a free
admission of pure air, so applied as to remove the confined smoke. This
remark both applies to coal and stone-mining. The introduction of some
other mode of lighting such pits than by oil is required. I know several
coal-pits where there is no carbonaceous disease, nor was it ever known;
and on examination I find that there is and ever has been in them a free
circulation of air. For example, the Penston coal-work, which joins
Pencaitland, has ever been free from this disease; but many of the
Penston colliers, on coming to work at Pe