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😟😟😟  In a letter famous in the history of occupational medicine, but little-known in the history of printingOffsite Link, Benjamin Franklin wrote to British physician and political radical Benjamin VaughanOffsite Link on July 31, 1786 of his early experiences of symptoms of lead palsy as an apprentice compositor in London at the printing house of Samuel PalmerOffsite Link in 1724. This letter is one of the earliest accounts of the symptoms of lead poisoning experienced by typesetters, and it is of special significance as a first-hand account by a skilled observer of the actual symptoms of lead palsy from handling lead type. In the letter Franklin described how he experienced "a kind of obscure Pain that I had sometimes felt as it were in the Bones of my Hand when working over the Types made very hot...." He also recorded that typesetters understood the necessity of washing the lead residue off their hands before eating, and recognized the risks of lead inhalation experienced by typefounders. Franklin also referenced payment to typesetters by piecework, indicating that the effects of lead palsy resulted in slower typesetting and reduced income. Specifically Franklin wrote:
"In 1724, being in London, I went to work in the Printing-House of Mr. Palmer, Bartholomew Close, as a Compositor. I then found a Practice I had never seen before, of drying a Case of Types, (which are wet in Distribution) by placing it sloping before the Fire. I found this had the additional Advantage, when the Types were not only dry’d but heated, of being confortable to the Hands working over them in cold weather. I therefore sometimes heated my Case when the Types did not want drying. But an old Workman observing it, advis’d me not to do so, telling me I might lose the Use of my Hands by it, as two of our Companions had nearly done, one of whom that us’d to earn his Guinea a Week could not then make more than ten Shillings and the other, who had the Dangles, but Seven and sixpence. This, with a kind of obscure Pain that I had sometimes felt as it were in the Bones of my Hand when working over the Types made very hot, induc’d me to omit the Practice. But talking afterwards with Mr. James, a Letterfounder in the same Close, and asking him if his People, who work’d over the little Furnaces of melted Metal, were not subject to that Disorder; he made light of any Danger from the Effluvia, but ascrib’d it to Particles of the Metal swallow’d with their Food by slovenly Workmen, who went to their Meals after handling the Metal, without well-washing their Fingers, so that some of the metalline Particles were taken off by their Bread and eaten with it. This appear’d to have some Reason in it. But the Pain I had experienc’d made me still afraid of those Effluvia."
(Source: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4759)
