Especially dangerous is the preparation of the paste, dipping, and manipulations connected with drying and filling the matches into boxes. According to the reports of the Austrian factory inspectors there are about 4500 lucifer match workers in that country, among whom seventy-four cases of necrosis are known to have occurred between the years 1900 and 1908 inclusive. Teleky[1] considers these figures much too small, and from inquiries undertaken himself ascertained that 156 cases occurred in Austria between 1896 and 1906, while factory inspectors’ reports dealt with only seventy-five. He was of opinion that his own figures were not complete, and thinks that in the ten years 1896 to 1905 there must have been from 350 to 400 cases of phosphorus necrosis in the whole of Austria. Despite strict regulations, modern equipment of the factories, introduction of improved machinery, and limitation of the white phosphorus match industry to large factories, it has not been possible to banish the risk, and the same is true of Bohemia, where there is always a succession of cases. Valuable statistics of phosphorus necrosis in Hungary are available.[2] In 1908 there were sixteen factories employing 1882 workers of whom 30 per cent. were young—children even were employed. The industry is carried on in primitive fashion without hygienic arrangements anywhere. It is strange that, notwithstanding these bad conditions, among a large number of the workers examined only fourteen active cases were found, in addition to two commencing, and fifteen cured—altogether thirty-one cases (excluding fifty-five cases in which there was some other pathological change in the mouth). Altogether ninety-three cases since 1900 were traced in Hungary, and in view of the unsatisfactory situation preventive measures, short of prohibition of the use of white phosphorus, would be useless. In England among 4000 lucifer match workers there were thirteen cases in the years 1900 to 1907 inclusive. Diminution in the number was due to improved methods of manufacture and periodical dental examination prescribed under Special Rules. Phosphorus necrosis is not the only sign of industrial phosphorus poisoning, as the condition of fragilitas ossium is recognised.[3] From what has been said it is evident that preventive measures against phosphorus poisoning, although they diminish the number, are not able to get rid of phosphorus necrosis, and so civilised States have gradually been driven to prohibit the use of white phosphorus (for the history of this see Part III).