Brass Founders’ Ague

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 27, 1913

Brass Founders’ Ague

FROM generation to generation the skilled workmen in the brass industry have kept, almost secretly among them, the knowledge that a peculiar disease, consequent upon the inhalation of metallic fumes, attends the making, molding, or founding of brass. This disease is called “brass founders’ ague,” and the average physician is not aware of its existence. It does not kill, it does not even require the physician’s attendance, but it paves the way for chronic diseases which later prove fatal. Therefore the present rate of mortality of the brass-foundry man is two and one-half times that of the farmer. The brass fumes so limit the age of foundry men that an extensive inquiry found only one seventh of the workers over the age of forty. There is no cure for brass chills, but they can be prevented by protecting the workmen from breathing brass fumes and foundry smoke. These chills practically never occur in large foundries with good ventilation. For so important an industry to perpetuate this disease when it can be prevented is as bad as the toleration of smallpox in a modern community.—Selected.