MINERS' COMPLAINT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3089, 11 January 1909, Page 4

MINERS' COMPLAINT.

Few people unless they have actually resided in a mining community in New Zealand have any idea of what is the actual nature of the disease known as "miners' complaint." Lately more than usual prominence has been given to the disease on account of the trouble experienced in insuring miners afflicted with the complaint. The following extract taken from an article written by Dr. Conlon, of Keefton, should therefore be read with interest:— "After death I have made autopsies of many of these cases of chronic fibrosis of the lungs,sometimes in men dying ot other causes —such as accident, apoplexy, and ruptured aneur-

ism. I have discovered this miners' disease of the lungs sometimes far advanced, though during life no trouble or great inconvenience was caused by it, and these men would have been considered as healthy as ever, so far as their lung condition was concerned. The appearance and fee! of this condition of the lungs is very characteristic. There are granules of quartz scattered all over the surface of the Kings, and embedded in the lung tissues, and that is in an early case of the disease. On passing the hand over the lung, it conveys to one's sense of touch the fueling of sandpaper. These are scattered all throngh the lung; wherever it is cut, the knife grits on them, and the king feels on its surface like sandpaper, or sometimes like a nutmeg trrater. "