Dan MacLeod
www.danmacleod.com
June 3, 2004
Dr. Bernardino Ramazzini is considered the founder of occupational medicine, known
primarily because of his book
Diseases of Workers published in Latin in 1713. His
descriptions of occupational diseases include items such as lung disease among miners,
lead poisoning among potters, and even overtaxed minds among "learned men."
Amidst all these disorders are descriptions of what clearly would be termed today as
MSDs.
(The following quotes are excerpted
from a translation published by the
University of Chicago Press, 1940.)
"Irregular motions in
unnatural postures"
"[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 of [excess] ways."
" . . . the harvest of diseases reaped by certain workers . . .[from] irregular
motions in unnatural postures of the body."
Standing
"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 delights and is restored by alternating
and varied actions."
Sitting
"Those who sit at their work suffer from their own particular diseases." [As
noted back in Roman times by the learned slave] Plautus, ‘sitting hurts your loins,
staring, your eyes.’"
Repetitive Hand Motions
"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."
Word Processing
"The maladies that affect the clerks arise from three causes: first, constant
sitting; secondly, incessant movement of the hand and always in the same direction; and
thirdly, the strain on the mind . . ."
"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."
"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 left hand, which was soon thereafter seized
with the same disorder."
*Ramazzini notes that in those days a notary was a type of unusually fast
scribe "skilled in rapid writing," apparently serving what today would be the
court reporter’s function.
