Grinders Asthma

[RichardB]

"Grinders' Asthma," the name formerly given tothe pulmonary affections, from which grinders are very apt to suffer, is said to have been unknown so long as the cutler had charge of all the processes of his trade, and to have only begun to attract attention when grinding became a separate department of labour on the erection of the first steam grinding wheel in Sheffield in 1786.

So prevalent and fatal had "grinders' asthma" become before the middle of the nineteenth century that Sir Arnold Knight, M.D., reading a paper before the Sheffield Medical and Surgical Society on the subject, stated that out of 2,500 grinders there were not thirty-five who had arrived at the age of fifty, and perhaps not double that number who had reached the age of forty-five.

Of eighty fork grinders (dry grinders), exclusive of boys, he found that there was not a single individual amongst them who had attained the age of thirty-six.

["There's none that have such hardships as we poor grinders do]