_Poisonously Dyed Clothing_.--The introduction of wearing apparel,
socks, stockings, and flannels which have been made, by new processes of
dyeing, to assume a rich red or yellow color, has led to a local disease
of the skin, attended, in rare cases, with slight constitutional symptoms.
This disease is due to the dyestuffs. The chief poisonous dyes are the red
and yellow coralline, substances derived from that series of chemical
bodies which have been obtained of late years from coal tar, and commonly
known as the aniline series.
The coloring principle is extremely active as a local poison. It induces
on the skin a reddish, slightly raised eruption of minute round pimples
which stud the reddened surface, and which, if the irritation be severe
and long-continued, pass into vesicles discharging a thin watery ichor and
producing a superficial sore. The disease is readily curable if the cause
of it be removed, and, as a general rule, it is purely local in character.
I have, however, once seen it pass beyond the local stage. A young
gentleman consulted me for what he considered was a rapidly developed
attack of erysipelas on the chest and back. He was, indeed, covered with
an intensely red rash, and he was affected with nervous symptoms, with
faintness and depression of pulse, of a singular and severe kind. I traced
both the local eruption and the general malady to the effect of the
organic dye in a red woolen chest and back "comforter." On removing the
"comforter" all the symptoms ceased. Similar and even fatal cases have
been known from the wearing of highly colored hose.
_Uncleanliness of Dress_.--Uncleanly attire creates conditions
favorable to disease. Clothing worn too long at a time becomes saturated
with the excretions and exhalations of the body, and, by preventing the
free transpiration from the surface of the skin, induces oppression of the
physical powers and mental inactivity. This observation will be accepted
by most persons as true in respect to underclothing; it is equally true in
regard to those outer garments which are often worn, unremittingly, until
the linings, torn and soiled, are unfit altogether for contact with the
cleaner garments beneath them. Health will not be clothed in dirty
raiment. They who wear such raiment suffer from trains of minor
complaints; from oppression, dullness, headache, nausea, which, though
trifling in themselves, taken one by one, when put together greatly reduce
that standard of perfect health by which the value of life is correctly
and effectively maintained.--RICHARDSON.
RESPIRATION.
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