Five cases of fatal lead poisoning occurred between 1884-6 among the employés of a certain white lead factory in the East of London. The cases presented the following common characters. They were all adult women, aged from 18 to 33. They had all worked at the factory for short periods from three to twelve months. They all exhibited mild symptoms of plumbism, such as a blue line round the gums and more or less ill-defined indisposition; paralyses were absent. They were all in their usual state of health within a few days or hours preceding death. Death was unexpected—mostly sudden. In four cases it was preceded by epileptic fits and coma, but in the fifth case no convulsions were noted, although they may have occurred during the night.

Considerable diversity of treatment has hitherto obtained, especially with regard to sedatives. No systematic experiments are recorded, and no very conclusive data have been published. The following quotations from some of the best authorities, placed side by side, will summarise our present knowledge of the subject.

When we examine the purpose and the progress of the animal world from the scientific standpoint, we find that “life is a cycle, beginning in an ovum, and coming round to an ovum again,” and the history of the human race, the failures and triumphs of nations, the loves and hates, the baseness and nobility of individuals, appear to be “the mere by-play of ovum bearing organisms.” Whatever other purpose is served by our existence, we are certainly placed here to reproduce our kind, and to furnish human figures to play their part in the next scene of the perpetual panorama of life. Moreover, we make man in our own image, after our likeness, and endow him with the characteristics we have inherited from our ancestors, and with those which we have created, for good or evil, in our own life. One of the oldest of books teaches us that the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations, and we might go further and say that physiological sins will penalize the race for many generations, and even lead to its utter extinction, unless counteracted by the strong antidotes of physiological morality, perfect hygienic conditions, and judicious intermarriage with untainted breeds.

The title of this paper implies the assumption that the current doctrine with reference to the condition known as pachymeningitis is not the true one; obviously the use of this term signifies that the pathological process underlying the morbid changes met with is one of inflammation, and that without the operation of this agency they would not occur. Now, without denying the possible occurrence of a condition to which the name of cerebral pachymeningitis might with appropriateness be applied, my endeavour will be to bring forward arguments and proofs to show that the condition which usually passes under that term is not the result of inflammation at all, but that all the phenomena met with may be explained as the simple result of effusion of blood into the subdural space (arachnoid cavity).