Download The history of woolsorters’ disease: a Yorkshire beginning

By Dr Neil Metcalfe
BMedSc (Hons) MBChB DRCOG DCH MRCGP (dist)
GP and Police Surgeon
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What is Woolsorter’s disease?
Historical timeline of scientific developments
relevant to Woolsorter’s disease
The potential link to bioterrorism
Introduction
•Working life in
mid-nineteenth
century
•Woolsorting
The Effects of Arts Trades and Professions on Health and Longevity, published
1831: Suggested woolsorters were healthy despite “hot, headache-inducing
conditions”
Found 1 in 5 to die from consumption or ‘decline’
West Yorkshire main
area for woolsorting
 Local cases of
bronchitis, pneumonia
and blood poisoning
termed maladie de
Bradford phrase
 Other areas known as
chambon, malignant
pustules, splenic fever
 First reported 1838
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Dr John Henry Bell (d.1906) wrote a death
certificate stating “contracted owing to the
owner’s neglect in taking adequate precautions”
without knowing what precautions exactly
 1878, Bradford Observer: “Three woolsorters had
died from blood poisoning contracted in the same
shed of the same factory”
 1878 Dr J.E. Eddison: could it be linked to
anthrax, common infectious disease of animals?
 1879 – Link confirmed by Bell
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Bacillus anthracis
One of oldest recorded
diseases of animals
Believed to be the Sixth
Plague in Book of
Exodus
Still regularly occurs in
ruminants e.g. cattle,
sheep, goats, camels,
buffalos, antelopes; in
hind-gut fermenters
such as zebras and
rhinos
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Found to have 2 forms of disease
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Inhalational anthrax
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Cutaneous anthrax
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Mr Byles, MP Salford North: “a terrible disease,
and if a man contracted it two days sufficed to kill
him. A man went to work perfectly well and came
home with a headache and in 48 hours he was
dead”
Bradford conference draws up Bradford Rules in
1884, later adopted nationally
Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act 1886
Human anthrax made a notifiable disease under
S39 of the Factory and Workshop Act 1895
Bradford Rules adopted into Departmental
Committee Report of 1897
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Seen in combers and carders
Wife’s start being infected
from husband’s clothes (6
deaths in 1914)
Sir Thomas Legge (18631932, right), the first Medical
Inspector of Factories gets
involved
 Blames air currents
 Blames certain wool especially
Persian, mohair and van mohair
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Regulations in 1905 extending those of 1897 to
include woolcombers and all handlers of goat
and camel hair
However, no mention regard quality of imports:
 Mr Jowett, MP for Bradford West “respectfully
submitted that the line of action taken by the Home
Office Department in regard to this disease of anthrax
started at the wrong end. It started when the disease
entered the factory, instead of preventing it entering
the factory”
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Chambers of Commerce of Bradford, Halifax
and Kidderminster wrote a circular to
consignors of Persian wool
 Keep extraneous matter out of exported bales
 Pack locks, fallen wool and skin in separate bales
 Prepared for higher costs
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Formed 1905
Aimed to study all cases of the disease and devise
means of total prevention
Dr Fritz Eurich (1867-1945) in charge of £300 budget
Used teaching laboratory at Bradford Technical
College
5g mohair colonised 130 000 colonies bacteria but if
washed clean no change in anthrax spore number
96 Persian wool fleeces with dried blood found to
have 90 positive cases of anthrax
Uneconomical to throw away blood stained wool but
heat treatments would ruin the wool. Lower
temperatures would increase anthrax spread
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Departmental Committee of Inquiry 1913
Commissioned Eurich to devise method of
disinfection
 Timing crucial:
 Peak in anthrax 1916-1918
Advised a 2% solution of formaldehyde in water at
102-105⁰F
 Disinfection Sub-Committee highlights Karachi,
Bombay, Basra and Cairo
 Accepted as part of Anthrax Prevention Act of 1919
 Governmental Wool Disinfection Station at Liverpool
sanctioned in 1920, opens 1921
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 Capacity for 5-6 million pounds of wool a year
 Low amount, only Indian goat hair and all hair from Egypt
scheduled first
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Number of cases of inhalation anthrax in
wool and hair industry from 1920-1996 was
430, 46 deaths
Reduction due to:
 disinfection station
 Decline in wool industry
 Improvements in health, nutrition, clothing,
housing
 Required carrying of anthrax warning cards
Continuing lack of treatment
•Exploited by British biological war
programme during WW2
•Tests performed at Gruinard
Island off coast of Ross and
Cromarty in Scotland
•Anthrax hundreds more times
potent than any chemical agent
at the time
•22 April 1943, 5million anthraxlaced cakes ready to be dropped
over Germany by air
•War brought about treatment
•Penicillin reduced case fatality
rates for 1944-1955 less than 4%
•Vaccine also introduced
•Just 14 cases occupational
anthrax between 1981-2000
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1970s – home-craftsman died of anthrax
using infected goat-camel hair yarn from
Pakistan
Soviet accident
Bioterrorism
Bioterrorism (continued)
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Woolsorters disease now a rare condition
Lessons can be learned from its history
Continued vigilance is needed
Thank local people for local disease