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428 METALS—THE NOBLER.
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immunity
during a severe outbreak of cholera in Nijni Novgorod. Even if these
individual experiences be regarded as mere coincidences, the hard and
indisputable fact remains of the Copper workers' exemption from this '
scourge.' Suitable Copper discs for wearing on the body can be obtained
from Messrs. Armbrecht, Nelson & Co., at 72 and 73 Duke Street,
London."
Copper
would seem without doubt to be strongly destructive of the bacteria of
disease. Certain bacteria which are often plentiful on silver coins
are, it is said, never found on coins of copper. Moreover, artisans in
copper works are immune as regards bacterial diseases.
M.
Moldini, during the 1884 epidemic of cholera in Paris, saved the lives
of many soldiers in the garrison of that city by causing them to wear
plates of copper next the skin, and administering to them a few drops
of some salt of copper, in solution, each morning and evening. Dr.
Raymond, at Gallipoli, adopted the same practice, with like success.
Dr. Clapton, when physician to St. Thomas's Hospital in 1869, read a
paper before the Clinical Society there, giving the results of a wide
series of enquiries into the health of the workers in copper during
epidemics of cholera. He found that the men engaged in various copper
works had always escaped cholera, and even choleraic diarrhoea,
although their neighbourhoods suffered severely during the great
epidemics. Dr. Leeson, at the same scientific meeting, stated that in
1832 there was no cholera among the verdigris workers in Deptford.
In
the copper mines the crude ore, in order to become a marketable
commodity, has to be roasted in furnaces ; it is stated that no
offensive odour is given off during this process; nevertheless, some
strange emanation
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