THE "BLUE LUNGS."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 136, 8 June 1907, Page 9

THE "BLUE LUNGS."

The inhabitants of almost every portiou of His Majesty's dominions rejoice (?) in some sort of generic nickname. The Canadian is a " Blue Nose," the Australian a " Cornstalk," " Gumsuckcr,"

'" Crow-eater.'" etc' according to his State; the Vorkshireman is a " Tyke," and to on. But the Londoner has no nickname, save, that of '" Cockney." which is realty only applicable to a small minority of the inhabitants of this great city —to wit, those born within the sound of Bow Church bells. It has been left to Sir Frederick Treves to provide Londoners generally with a nickname. Henceforth we arc to be known as " Blue Lungs " — uidess the good people of Manchester object on the score that they have a better claim to the title. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society this week, Sir Frederick said that during a three days' fog in Manchester it was calculated that for eveiy square mile there was one aud ithalf" hundredweight of sulphuric acid and thirteen tons of smuts. A similar examination in Chelsea revealed that for every square mile there was sis tons of smuts. The lung of a young child was .pink on the surface, and pink rightthrough. The lung of an adult, especially if he lived in a big city, was dingy blue —marked with lines of blue patches and streaks, a colour which permeated the inner depths of the organ. That was absolutely due to dirt and soot. He could say from what he had seen of the lungs of d_d persons _ Londpn .that tiey w.ere

absolutely black on the surface, and down to their very depths a thundercloud blue.

Sir Frederick also told us that there is a positive coal mine floating in tbe air of London, and he suggested that instead of spending huge sums of money in extracting nitrogen from the air we might find it more profitable to extract the carbon. Its presence in such vast quantities in the London air was, he said, the starting point of serious diseases, and of appalling misery. In London alone the fogs killed people, not by scores of hundreds, but by thousands, and he cited the great fog of 18S0, during which the death-rate in the metropolis rose in one week from 27 to 48 per thousand of the population.