Quotes for All
Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed…to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight…[We] ought to show peculiar zeal…in taking precautions for … Read more
…those who sit at their work and are therefore called ‘chair workers,’ such as cobblers and tailors, suffer from their own particular diseases … [T]hese workers … suffer from general ill-health and an excessive accumulation of unwholesome humors caused by their sedentary life … so to some extent counteract the harm done by many days … Read more
Those who work standing … carpenters, sawyers, carvers, blacksmiths, masons … are liable to varicose veins … [because] the strain on the muscles is such that the circulation of the blood is retarded. Standing even for a short time proves exhausting compared with walking and running though it be for a long time … Nature … Read more
I have noticed bakers with swelled hands, and painful, too; in fact the hands of all such workers become much thickened by the constant pressure of kneading the dough. Bernardino Ramazzini
The mortality of those who dig minerals is very great, and women who marry men of this sort marry again and again. According to Agricola, at the mines in the Carpathian mountains, women have been known to marry seven times. Bernardino Ramazzini
[I have seen] workers in whom certain morbid affections gradually arise from some particular posture of the limbs or unnatural movements of the body called for while they work. Such are the workers who all day stand or sit, stoop or are bent double, who run or ride or exercise their bodies in all sorts … Read more
The incessant driving of the pen over paper causes intense fatigue of the hand and the whole arm because of the continuous … strain on the muscles and tendons. Bernardino Ramazzini
When a doctor arrives to attend some patient of the working class, he ought not to feel his pulse the moment he enters, as is nearly always done without regard to the circumstances of the man who lies sick; he should not remain standing while he considers what he ought to do, as though the … Read more
All sedentary workers … suffer from the itch, are a bad colour, and in poor condition … for when the body is not kept moving the blood becomes tainted, its waste matter lodges in the skin, and the condition of the whole body deteriorates. Bernardino Ramazzini
An acquaintance of mine, a notary by profession, who, by perpetual writing, began first to complain of an excessive wariness of his whole right arm which could be removed by no medicines, and which was at last succeeded by a perfect palsy of the whole arm. . . . He learned to write with his … Read more