When living in the East of England I found my children troubled with obstinate sores, chiefly about the joints. They would not heal. I sent for the local doctor, and he tinkered at them, but instead of mending, the wounds got worse. This went on for many weeks. Suddenly an idea struck me. I had papered some of my rooms with highly æsthetic wall coverings by a certain well-known artist-poet who had a business in wall-papers. I passed my hand over the wall, and found that the colouring matter came off on my hand. At once I drove into the nearest town and submitted the paper to an analyst. He told me that it was charged with sulphuret of arsenic, common orpiment, and that as the glue employed for holding the paint had lost all power, this arsenical dust floated freely in the air. I at once sent my children away, and they had not been from home a week before they began to recover. Of course, all the wall-papers were removed. [Illustration: ARSENIC WORKS] About a month later I was in Freiburg, in Baden, and immediately on my arrival called on an old friend, and asked how he and all his were. “Only fairly well,” he replied. “We are all--the young people especially--suffering from sores. Whether it is the food----” “Or,” said I, interrupting him, “the paper.” Then I told him my experience. “Why,” said he, “a neighbour, a German baron, has his children ill in the same way.” At once he ran into the baron’s house and told him what I had said. Both proceeded immediately to the public analyst with specimens of the papers from the rooms in which the children slept. The papers were found to be heavily laden with arsenic. Unhappily, in spite of all precautions, the work at the arsenic mine and manufactory is prejudicial to health. The workers are disabled permanently at an average age of forty. Of deaths in the district, eighty-three per cent. are due to respiratory diseases, while sixty-six per cent. are due to bronchitis alone. For the last three years, out of every hundred deaths among persons of all ages in the parish of Calstock twenty-six have been due to diseases of the respiratory organs, but out of every hundred employés at the arsenic works who have died or become disabled eighty-three deaths have been due to respiratory diseases. It is evident that with such an unusual proportion of one particular disease in the most able-bodied portion of the community there must be a definite existing cause. No doubt that a very minute amount of arsenic may pass through the nostrils and down the throat, but what is far more prejudicial than that is the sulphurous acid which cannot be excluded by the handkerchief and lint, but passes freely through both. This is extremely irritating to the mucous membrane. But the fact of working for hours with the breathing impeded by the wraps about mouth and nose is probably the leading cause of the mischief.